The Coldstreams and their guest now adjourned into the veranda to enjoy the evening air, and the golden glow on foliage and flower which gives such a charm to the sunset hour in the East. Io brought out her work; she was knitting a delicate shawl for her mother. The young matron felt tranquilly happy. She was much pleased to see the friendship which appeared to be already growing up between her husband and the fair-haired, gentle and earnest chaplain. “It is just what Oscar needed,” thought Io, as her fingers plied the ivory needles, whilst her eyes rested on the two gentlemen conversing together. “My husband required a brother-like, pious friend with whom to speak freely on religious subjects—one whose pleasant society may rouse him at last from his mysterious sadness. Mr. Lawrence will be to Oscar in spiritual things what dear old Dr. Pinny will be in matters relating to health. My beloved one will gradually—oh, may Heaven grant it!—recover his natural tone of mind. I  shall take care to invite the good chaplain very often to the house. I like his quiet, unobtrusive manner; he is just the person to win the confidence of my husband.”
The conversation in the veranda chiefly related to the curious traditions existing amongst the Karens. Mark Lawrence had made them his study, and they had beguiled many an hour that might otherwise have been sad and lonely. The young chaplain had hitherto met with no kindred spirit in the limited society of Moulmein. Full of earnest devotion himself, and a warm sympathizer in the missionary cause, Mark had been discouraged by the difficulty of imbuing others with his own zeal; it was like dragging a heavy load up a hill. The easy-going worldliness of the doctor, the carelessness of Pogson, the stolidity of Cottle, the vulgar loquacity of his wife, made Mark often sadly contrast his position in Moulmein with the happy life which he had led in England in a rural parish where he had almost as many friends as hearers, and where he was a member of a large family circle. Now and then the chaplain had met with missionaries whose names are still honoured and whose work still flourishes. Those days had been red-letter days to Mark Lawrence; but they had been “few and far between”—little oases in a dull, sandy plain. Now, in the accomplished, highly-educated young merchant who had come to reside in Moulmein, the chaplain thought that he had found a real friend—one who would join with him in every labour of love.
“You were much struck, I saw at the tradition of the Fall,” said Mr. Lawrence to Oscar; “but still more curious, at least to my mind, are the prophecies which amongst the Karens have been handed down from father to son during ages which no one is able to count.”
“What kind of prophecies?” asked Oscar.
“Mysterious foretellings of both the first and second Advent of our Lord,” was the reply,—“foretellings which force us on to the conclusion that the ancient ancestor of this singular race must have been a kind of post-diluvian Enoch, inspired by the S............