Mad and mysterious words, never heard before in Rubbleford, poured from his lips.

"Devotional beauty," "Fra Angelico's angels," "Giotto and the cherubs," "Enough to bring the divine Raphael down from heaven to paint her." Such were a few fragments of the mad gentleman's incoherent mutterings, as they reached his neighbors' ears.

The amusement they yielded was soon wrought to its climax by a joke from an attorney's clerk, who suggested that this queer man, with the rosy face, must certainly be the long-lost father of the "Mysterious Foundling!" Great gratification was consequently anticipated from what might take place when the child arrived opposite the bench occupied by the excitable stranger.
Slowly, slowly, the little light figure went round upon the broad partition wall of the ring, until it came near, very near, to the place where Valentine was sitting.
Ah, woeful sight! so lovely, yet so piteous to look on! Shall she never hear kindly human voices, the song of birds, the pleasant murmur of the trees again?
Are all the sweet sounds that sing of happiness to childhood, silent for ever to _her ?_ From those fresh, rosy lips shall no glad words pour forth, when she runs and plays in the sunshine?
Shall the clear, laughing tones be hushed always?
the young, tender life be for ever a speechless thing, shut up in dumbness from the free world of voices?
Oh! Angel of judgment! hast thou snatched her hearing and her speech from this little child, to abandon her in helpless affliction to such profanation as she now undergoes?
Oh, Spirit of mercy! how long thy white-winged feet have tarried on their way to this innocent sufferer, to this lost lamb that cannot cry to the fold for help! Lead, ah, lead her tenderly to such shelter as she has never yet found for herself! Guide her, pure as she is now, from this tainted place to pleasant pastures, where the sunshine of human kindness shall be clouded no more, and Love and Pity shall temper every wind that blows over her with the gentleness of perpetual spring! Slowly, slowly, the light figure went round the great circle of gazers, ministering obediently to their pleasure, waiting patiently till their curiosity was satisfied.

And now, her weary pilgrimage was well nigh over for the night.

She had arrived at the last group of spectators who had yet to see what she looked like close, and what tricks she could exhibit with her cards.
She stopped exactly opposite to Valentine; and when she looked up, she looked on him alone.
Was there something in the eager sympathy of his eyes as they met hers, which spoke to the little lonely heart in the sole language that could ever reach it?
Did the child, with the quick instinct of the deaf and dumb, read his compassionate disposition, his pity and longing to help her, in his expression at that moment?
It might have been so.