GRACE ALFORD; OR, The Way of Unselfishness. BY C. M. SMITH. LONDON: JOSEPH MASTERS, ALDERSGATE STREET, AND NEW BOND STREET. MDCCCLXV. 250. m. 245. GRACE ALFORD; OR, The Way of Unselfishness. THE CHAPTER I. "The heart of childhood is all mirth, As free and blithe as if on earth Were no such thing as woe." HE tide had reached its lowest ebb, and the sea left a wide reach of sand, and a broad ledge of low rocks covered with seaweed open to the bright summer sun, and free to any visitors who might wish to enjoy the smooth walk afforded by the former, or to explore the latter. It was a very lovely part of the Devonshire coast that Exmouth beach, not the side where the river Ex makes its junction with the sea, (which is not to be admired, being a flat extent of mud, neither fair no salubrious,) but the shore on the other side of the town beneath the picturesque red cliffs. There the soft yellow B sands are pleasant to walk or sit upon, and huge masses of rock stand up, some solitary, others grouped together, affording sheltered nooks where children may play at hide-andseek and their elders enjoy a book or a quiet chat. The beach is shut in, though not closely, by cliffs of red sandstone, rich in verdure and tapestried by a variety of flowers, chiefly of the vetch and convolvulus kinds. On this glorious summer morning the shore was almost solitary, only two or three fisherboys with their trousers tucked up to their knees and baskets on their arms, were collecting shell fish far out on the ledge of rocks among the thick seaweed. Suddenly there came dancing, springing, bounding with delight, a little girl about ten years old, to the edge of the low rocks. Her broad straw hat shaded her fair rosy face, and the hazel eyes which sparkled with pleasure, and the light breeze played with the soft brown hair, which curling at its own will, hung round her neck. She stopped when she had advanced over two or three of the masses of rock, and seemed overpowered by the beauty around her. The almost cloudless sky, the broad lights on the sea, the rich colouring both of the bare rocks close beneath her, and of the dark weed-clad further ledge, the basins of clear water between, the white-winged gulls soaring and wheeling round above, all was so beautiful, so rich in enjoyment that Grace Alford clasped her hands and breathed a long sigh in inexpressible delight. But she did not stand many minutes silently enjoying all this loveliness, she must join in the expression of joy which all things round her uttered, and in the fulness of her heart longing to give voice to its feelings, she chanted in her clear childish tones some verses from Psalms often heard at church. It might well be that the song was not strictly musical, the tones not all correct, but they harmonized well enough with the wild glad cry of the birds, the notes of the breeze, and the soft murmurs of the returning sea. Grace had learned no ordinary songs, her notes of real loving thankfulness for all the beauty round her were what she had been taught by the choristers of the Church, where since her earliest childhood she had been led by her mother; and what more joyful or more fitting for the child seeking to give a voice to Nature than these inspired songs? No one was near to check that gladness, and for some little time Grace sang with heart and voice as she stepped lightly from one rock to another; but soon she came on a large clear pool of water in which the beautiful sea anemones were spreading themselves, extending their curious rays like chrysanthemum flowers in the warm beams of the sun. Grace's song was soon ended, and she stooped to admire them. Purple, crimson, pink, white, dark red, they lay in the transpar ent pool, the loveliest sea-things she had ever seen. Her little shaggy dog Mufftie, who had been scampering about at his own will and occasionally barking at the sea gulls, now trotted |