BY MRS. HUGHS.

"Will you come to our house, and help Jenny, for my mother is very ill?" said a little girl, in the feeble accents of childhood, whilst she knocked at the door of a cottage. The voice was weak, but it uttered tones, which, though they may sometimes be heard with indifference by the inmates of a palace, never fail to find a ready way to the heart of the humble cottager. "What sound is that I hear?" said the mistress of the lowly dwelling, as the voice of the child roused her from a sound sleep; "was I dreaming? or did I really hear a voice?"

"Will you come to my mother, for Jenny thinks she is dying?" continued the little girl, as she again applied her hand to the door. Convinced now that it was no dream, the benevolent cottager started from her bed, and opening the door, exclaimed in a tone of surprise, "Why, Sally, is that you?—Here, all by yourself, in the very dead of night!"

"My mother is so ill that Jenny could not leave her, and she had nobody else to send to ask you to come and help her."

"Come John, get up directly!" said the woman, rousing her husband, who under the influence of a previous day of hard labour, had slept too soundly to hear what passed. "Get up! for you will very likely have to go for the doctor. And come in, Sally dear, till I get something on me, and I will go with you in a minute."

Very little preparation was necessary, and in a few minutes the kind hearted woman hastened to the house of sickness, accompanied by the little girl, and followed by her husband, who though no less willing, was much less able to throw off the lethargic influence of sleep, and trudged after the nimble feet of his wife as if scarcely conscious whither he was going. As the distance was very short, he had no time to get fully awake, before the little Sally opened the door of her mother's house and ushered himself and his wife in; but on entering, a sight presented itself to their view that instantly roused every feeling of the soul to pity and commiseration. On a humble bed, in the corner of a very humble apartment, lay stretched the form of her to whose assistance they had been summoned; not, however, either writhing with pain or burning with fever, but cold, stiff, and lifeless; whilst a bowl stood near, which told at once, by its contents, that the rupture of a blood vessel had produced the sad catastrophe. By the side of the bed knelt her daughter, a girl about sixteen, who, "struck with sad anguish at the stern decree," seemed to retain little more of life than the corpse, the hand of which she grasped between hers, whilst her eyes were riveted on the motionless face, with an expression of the most heartrending agony. Grief wears a variety of forms, according to the nature of the mind of which it takes possession; but it assumes no appearance that imparts so immediate a sense of its intensity to the heart of the spectator, as that silent and speechless sorrow that finds no relief from utterance. In vain did the benevolent neighbours endeavour to rouse the poor girl from her trance of wo; the stroke had been so sudden, so unlooked-for, and was so appalling in its nature, that poor Jenny, though she had been long familiar with adversity, seemed ready to sink under it, without a single effort to resist its overpowering influence.

"Jenny! dear Jenny! don't take on this way!" said the humane neighbour, whilst her husband raised the almost insensible girl from her kneeling posture by the bed-side, and placed her on a chair. The little Sally imagining, from the stillness that prevailed, that her mother had fallen asleep, had kept at a distance from the bed-side, lest she should by any means disturb her; but now beginning to wonder why her sister should thus be the chief object of anxiety, she had crept softly forward to investigate the cause, and set her eyes, for the first time in her life, on the features of death. The sudden cry which she gave, was the first sound that reached the heart of the grief-stricken Jenny; and as the weeping child ran toward her, she opened her arms, and clasping her to her bosom, wept over her in all the luxury of sorrow. Her compassionate neighbours knew enough of the human heart, to judge it best to leave her to herself; and, therefore, summoning some other of their friends to their assistance, they busied themselves about the various offices for the dead, and left poor Jenny to the undisturbed indulgence of her wo. But Jenny's grief was too intense to allow her long the relief of tears, and she sat, almost motionless, clasping the little Sally in her arms, who had soon wept herself to sleep, and waited till she was permitted again to throw herself by the side of her lifeless parent, and watch over the remains of what she had so fondly loved. This indulgence was all that she desired, and all of which she was capable of partaking; and she sat watching the body almost without either speaking, or moving, till the moment arrived when it was to be deposited in its last silent mansion. Then it was, that the poor girl felt that she had indeed lost her beloved parent for ever. Whilst the lineaments still remained before her view, on which she had so long delighted to gaze, even though they were cold and motionless, she felt as though she had still something to rest upon; but when these too were taken away, when the very shell which the soul of affection had once inhabited, was removed from a world in which she herself was still to remain, she, for the first time, became sensible of that total destitution of soul that is felt after the loss of those we love. Happily, however, for poor Jenny, she was forbidden, by the calls of imperative necessity, to indulge in unavailing sorrow; and the exertions that her forlorn situation demanded, proved the most effectual balm to her wounded bosom; and gradually, a meek submission to the will of Him to whom she had been taught from her earliest infancy to bow in humble confidence, superseded that bitter anguish which had at first swelled her heart almost to bursting.

The parent, whom Jenny so deeply mourned, had been left a widow some months before the little Sally was born. She had two children then living; Jenny, who was at that time about nine years old, and a boy, five years her senior. The mother had, before her marriage, been an upper servant in a genteel and respectable family, and had acquired, in consequence, a degree of cultivation superior to the situation in which her marriage afterwards placed her. The chief ambition of her heart was to keep her children under her own eye, and to train their infant minds to religion and virtue. But William, her boy, who was fourteen at the time of his father's death, soon began to be anxious to do something for himself; and, as the surest and shortest means of attaining that desirable end, he had fixed his mind upon the sea. In vain did his mother remind him that the salt wave had been the grave of his father, or endeavour to impress upon his mind the many anxious days and sleepless nights he would thus impose upon her; he saw no other means half so likely to enable him, in the course of a few years, to provide for her and his sisters, and to relieve her delicate frame from the hardship, which it was so ill calculated to bear, of labouring for their subsistence. "Besides, mother," remonstrated he, "I have no other chance of seeing the world, but by being a sailor, and I could never be happy without seeing some of the strange countries that my father used to tell me about. And you know, too," continued the generous boy, looking as he spoke, at his elder sister, to whom he was exceedingly attached, "by the time that I am out of my apprenticeship, Jenny will be almost grown up, and with the wages I can then earn, and your good management, we shall be able to give her some good schooling, and keep her at home with you; for she is too pretty and too delicate to go to service." Jenny was indeed beautiful, even at that early age, and every year, as it added to her height, increased also the grace and loveliness of her form. Her features were regular, her complexion not only fair but almost transparent, while her bright auburn locks hung in luxuriance about her face and shoulders. But it was not in the symmetry of feature or the grace of form, that Jenny's beauty was centered. It was the inward harmony which presided over all, and gave to her full blue eyes an expression of the most touching sensibility, that made her an object so delightful to look upon: and her mother felt, as she gazed upon her, that she must perform her own duties ill indeed, if, even without any higher advantages of education than she could herself give her, the lovely bud, as it expanded into maturity, did not become a flower worthy of being transplanted into the most highly cultivated garden.

William went to sea, and his mother had all the satisfaction that a mother's heart can enjoy, of hearing his master express, at every return of the vessel, the highest approbation of his conduct. Thus supported and comforted by her children, she laboured incessantly but cheerfully for her own and their support, at first as a seamstress; but this sedentary occupation being unfavourable to her constitution, she afterward rented a small cottage to which was attached a garden of considerable extent, which Jenny and she managed to cultivate themselves, with the aid of very little hired assistance; and, from the sale of the produce, she contrived to make a scanty but respectable livelihood. Time thus rolled on, Jenny had completed her thirteenth year, and her William was within a few weeks of being out of his time. But alas! William was away, and many weeks, nay months, had passed over without his having been heard of. Again and again, had she gone to the owners to inquire after him, but in vain; no tidings had been received of the vessel since she had left the port at which she had taken in her lading, and had sailed homeward bound; and though the usual length of the passage was that of two or three weeks at furthest, above thrice that number had elapsed without any tidings of her having been received.

The poor widow had, on the evening previous to her death, again been at the owner's on the mournful errand of inquiring after her lost boy, and had again returned disappointed and dejected. She had, on her way thither, been overtaken by a heavy shower of rain, which had wet her clothes quite through. She had paid no attention, however, to the circumstance; for her mind was engrossed with the thought of her child, and though Jenny, on her return home, used every means in her power to prevent her taking harm from it, a cough, to which she had always been subject, and which at that time was worse than usual, soon showed how much injury she had received. In a violent paroxysm of coughing, she had ruptured the blood-vessel that put so sudden a period to her existence, and left poor Jenny alone and destitute in the world,—alone except the little helpless being, whose dependence upon her seemed only to make her situation still more deplorable. Jenny's mind, however, was one of those which, though tuned to every gentle feeling, yet possessed a native strength which rose in proportion to the pressure of misfortune; so that, as she looked upon little Sally, and considered that she was now, in all probability, her only earthly protector, she felt a tenderness almost parental rise within her, and she determined to resist every inclination to selfish indulgence of her feelings, and exert every energy for the support of her little orphan sister,—the posthumous heir of poverty and sorrow. But let not those who are surrounded by plenty, even though mourning the loss of some beloved relative, imagine that they know the difficulties of the task that poor Jenny had to perform; nor yet those who though pressed by the hard gripe of poverty, have yet some remaining friends from whom they have a right to claim the tender balm of sympathy; for of these comforts poor Jenny was equally destitute, and she found herself standing alone in the wide world, poor, friendless, and forlorn; deprived of "every stay save innocence and Heaven." It is true, some faint hope still played about her heart, that her beloved brother—her kind, her affectionate William, might yet be restored to her; but every day, as it passed over her head, made that hope more faint, till, like the hues of its own bow, which gradually fade into ether, it died away by degrees in her bosom; and at length scarce a tint remained to give its colouring to the mental horizon. Still, however, she bore up and struggled against the despondency that threatened to lay hold of her mind; and even though grim want seemed ready to stare her in the face, her steadfast spirit, relying upon the goodness of that superintending Power, that is ever ready to be a father to the fatherless, looked up to heaven with a confident hope that she would not be forgotten. "Will He," she would say, as she watched the fruit ripen, or the seed germinate, "will He who takes care of all these things and gives them the nourishment which they require, turn a deaf ear to the cry of his orphan children? It cannot be! That little bird," she continued, "is pouring forth its soul in thankfulness and joy, though it has no stores laid up for to-morrow, and I too will trust to the same protecting Power." But from what source to-morrow's fare was to be derived, poor Jenny could form but little idea. Autumn was now far advanced, and the produce of their garden had become very scanty, whilst the expenses attendant on her mother's funeral had entirely exhausted their small store of money; so that when the little Sally complained of hunger, and begged that she would give her something to eat, she put the last morsel of bread into her hands, totally at a loss to conjecture whence the money was to be derived that was to purchase more. "Why will you not eat any yourself, Jenny?" said the child, as she eagerly devoured the dry morsel. "I am sure you must be hungry, for I have not seen you eat any thing to-day." "I do not want to eat," replied Jenny, forcing herself to speak in a cheerful tone, though she felt at the same moment that the coarsest food would be to her a most delicious repast. "Is it because there is no more in the house?" asked Sally, whose mind, for the first time, received the idea of their scanty provision. Jenny was silent. "There is more bread here than I want," said the child, breaking, as she spoke, the piece of bread that she had before declared was not half so much as she could eat. "Take this piece, Jenny, I don't want it, and I am sure you will like it after you have tasted it."

Jenny had watched, with a dry eye, her little sister devouring their last morsel of food, whilst she herself was suffering under the most importunate demands of hunger; but this tender sympathy in the child, and her willingness to give up a part of what she so much needed herself, brought a flood of tears to her eyes. "He, who feeds the young ravens when they cry cannot let such sweetness and innocence suffer for want of food," said she inwardly, as clasping the child in her arms, she bathed her cheeks with her tears. "Don't cry, Jenny," said the affectionate little girl, as she wiped the tears from her sister's eyes with her little apron. "Don't cry. Indeed I don't want any more just now, and I dare say you will get another loaf before I am hungry again. And who-knows but William may come back, and then we shall have every thing that we want? You have not been at the owner's lately, Jenny, to ask about the ship," continued the child, anxious to divert her sister's mind from the sad subject of her reflections. "Why don't you go, Jenny?"

"I am afraid there is little use in it," answered her sister in a tone of despondency.

"But try, Jenny, just try once more, and perhaps good news may come when you are not expecting it."

"Well, we will go now," returned Jenny; "and," added she, "there are a few plums on the old tree that we will take with us, though they are not half ripe yet; and perhaps we may get somebody to give us as much for them as will get bread enough to keep us from starving at least one day longer." A little basket was soon filled with the plums, and they set out, once more cheered by that hope which seldom totally forsakes the bosom of youth and innocence: but, on arriving at the owner's, Jenny was surprised to find all in a state of confusion. The servant that came to the door was evidently much agitated, and on Jenny's making her accustomed inquiry if any thing had yet been heard of the ship, she was told by the girl that a letter had, a very short time before, been received by her mistress, informing her that some wrecks of the vessel had been cast ashore, and some of the sailors' chests, among which was one bearing the name of William Anderson; and that there was every reason to believe that all the crew were lost. Here then was a fatal blow to all the fond hopes that Jenny had so anxiously cherished; and her affectionate brother, on whom she had relied for support and consolation in the hour of affliction, had himself found a premature and watery grave. The servant's sympathy was too powerfully excited for the distress of her mistress, whose husband had filled the double station of master and owner, to leave much to bestow upon poor Jenny; so that, after giving her all the information in her power, she turned from the door, leaving the two orphan sisters to themselves to mourn over their share of this heavy calamity. Jenny turned her steps homeward, with a heart bowed down with affliction, and was only made conscious of where she was and whither she was going, by the questions that Sally occasionally put to her. "Look at that black cloud, Jenny," said the child, "I never saw such a cloud before. Do you think we can get home before the rain comes on?" Jenny looked up and saw that the sky had indeed a most portentous aspect; but the gloom that surrounded her only seemed to be in unison with the state of her mind, and she almost felt rejoiced that nature did not wear the appearance of gladness, whilst she felt that all was darkness within. "Isn't that thunder?" asked Sally, as a deep and distant murmur rolled round the horizon. "And there is lightning, and there is another flash," continued the child; "Oh! I wish we were at home." Jenny saw the lightning and heard the thunder, but she heard and saw almost without being conscious that she did either; for her mind was absorbed in the idea of her beloved brother having been exposed to a storm, such as that which was approaching, accompanied with the additional horrors of a tempestuous ocean. A violent gust of wind now swept past them, and the thunder which, only a moment before, had rolled at a distance, burst over their heads with a noise which seemed to shake the very ground on which they stood; whilst the clouds brooded around in almost midnight darkness, or only parted to emit flashes of lightning, that, for the instant, illumined every object.

"Oh! Jenny, what must we do?" cried the little Sally, shrinking with fear, and putting her hands to her ears to shut out the noise of the thunder. Jenny put her arm round the neck of the child, and pressed her tenderly toward her, as, looking up at the forked shafts which flew across the skies, she inwardly breathed the prayer that he who rolls the thunderbolt and sends the lightning forth, if it was his pleasure that they should either of them fall beneath the stroke, would in his mercy let them sink together; and not leave one remaining, the helpless or wretched survivor of the other.

Jenny perhaps never looked more beautiful or interesting than she did at that moment, as she stood turning her back to a storm which she no longer felt the power to resist, her arm passed with an almost maternal tenderness round the neck of her orphan sister, who seemed to rest against her as if assured that she was under the care of a protecting angel; and her fine eyes raised to heaven with a mingled expression of steadfast faith and humble submission. "My mother! my dear William!" she faintly uttered, "perhaps these shafts of lightning are sent as the messengers of our re-union." As she said this, a voice seemed to be borne along on the wind, and she almost fancied that she heard her own name pronounced. "It is a wild thought," she continued internally, "but I could almost imagine that William's voice is in the wind, and that he is calling me to join him and our blessed mother in the regions above." Again the voice sounded in her ear, and again, and again—it grew louder and more distinct—what could it mean? Was she already in the region of spirits? or were those angelic beings really permitted, as has sometimes been imagined, to revisit this world and hover over those whom they had loved on earth? As she asked herself the question, she turned round, but what words can express her feelings when, on doing so, she beheld, hastening toward her with all the speed that the violence of the storm would permit, the beloved brother whom she had believed to be the inmate of a watery grave! Her mind had been strung to too high a degree of agony, and she was too much exhausted from the want of food, to bear this sudden revulsion of feeling without sinking under it. She uttered a scream, and made an attempt to rush forward, but her limbs became powerless, a film came over her eyes, and she would have sunk on the ground, had not William reached her in time to receive her in his arms. So deep was the swoon into which she had fallen, that there was time for her to be conveyed to a house that was at no very great distance, before her consciousness again returned to her. When it did, she started up, and looked eagerly around, as if to assure herself that the object she had seen had not been a mere vision of the imagination; but she was soon convinced of the happy reality, for her eye immediately rested on her beloved William as he stood trying to still the cries of the little Sally, who could not be convinced that the insensible state in which Jenny lay was not equally hopeless as that which she had first witnessed at the time of her mother's death.

A copious flood of tears now came to Jenny's relief, which she was permitted to indulge for a considerable time without interruption, and then her brother led her gradually on to speak of their mother, and describe the particulars of a death of which little Sally had already informed him; after which, he proceeded to satisfy her curiosity respecting himself. It appeared that a long continuation of high and contrary winds had kept the vessel buffeting about the ocean for many weeks, till at length a storm, too powerful to be resisted, had driven her on the coast, where she soon became a total wreck. Happily for William, however, he had been so fortunate as not only to save his own life, but that of his captain also, who had become so completely benumbed with cold and long exposure to the storm, as to be totally incapable of assisting himself, and must have been an unresisting prey to the angry waves, had not the generous youth determined to try to save him, even at the most imminent hazard of his own life. After many difficulties and dangers, he succeeded in gaining a footing on shore for both his captain and himself, but it was a considerable time before the former was able to proceed homeward; but when he was, they hastened on in the hope of preceding the news of their misfortunes. The letter, however, giving an account of the portions of the wreck which had been washed on shore, on a part of the coast at some distance from that on which they had landed, had arrived a short time before them; indeed, they had reached the captain's house only a very few minutes after Jenny and her little sister had left it, and William had lost no time in hastening after them. "We have weathered a heavy gale," said he, after he had given his sisters this account, "but it is all over now; and what is better, our captain declares he will never go to sea again, but will give me the command of the new vessel which he is going to have built. He says that I saved his life, and he is determined to prove a father to me in return."

"Oh! my mother," cried Jenny, clasping her hands and raising her eyes in thankfulness to Heaven, "why are you not here to enjoy this happy moment!"

"And why should you not, my dear girl," said the lady into whose house Jenny had been carried, and who had listened with great interest to the conversation between the brother and sister; "why should you not believe not only that she sympathizes in your happiness, but that her views of the great scheme of Providence are now so enlarged, as to render her capable of perceiving that, what we here call evils, are as mere motes in the balance, when put in competition with the great sum of happiness which awaits the virtuous hereafter? Upon the benevolent plan on which all creation is formed, the petty distinctions of rich and poor, high and low, on which we are apt to place so much importance, will soon be lost in the grand and comprehensive distinctions of virtue and vice; to which standard alone, all will be brought, and which may at once place the humblest peasant above the proudest monarch."

"Yes! yes! Jenny," said the young sailor, "we know that whatever storms may beset us, we still have a never-failing Friend, always at hand, who will steer us to a safe harbour at last. So come, my sweet lilly and my pretty rose-bud," added he, taking a hand of each of his sisters, "cheer up, my girls! for, though the winds still blow and the skies frown, by the blasts of poverty, at least, you shall never more be assailed, as long as your brother's arm has power to protect you."