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FRANCESCA CARRARA.
271

The wild beast will howl around your resting-place, and the fierce Indian will track your way; the voice of the torrent and the tempest will be familiar as the singing brook and the April shower; the fruits of the earth will be strange to your taste, and its herbage strange to your eye; the redbreast will never more stand by your threshold, but the bird of prey will darken the sunshine, and the snake cross your daily vision. Danger, and toil, and long suffering, are before ye, but faint not on the way which it is appointed ye shall go. The Lord is with you, and be not cast down, though ye suffer for conscience' sake. The mighty wilderness will hear the voice of your prayers. Ye will build yourselves houses beneath its ancient trees; your fields will reward your toil, and your cities arise fair and strong; and though ye now abandon the graves of your fathers, your children will dwell in faith and hope around your own. Go! in the name and for the dear sake of that Saviour whose name ye will not hear outraged, and whose altar it is yours to keep free from a stain."

Suddenly the speaker paused, his whole frame agitated by a convulsive motion; his face shook with yet more deadly whiteness, and his eyes, wild and dilated, fixed on Robert Evelyn, who, in the