rarely now was the name of Hester Hamilton heard at the old stone
house, and all save one seemed to have forgotten that such as she had
ever lived. This was Hagar Warren, who in her cottage by the mine has
grown older and more crazy-like since last we saw her. Her hair, once
so much like that which Madam Conway likens to her own, has bleached
as white as snow, and her tall form is shriveled now, and bent. The
secret is wearing her life away, and yet she does not regret what she
has done. She cannot, when she looks upon the beautiful girl who comes
each day to her lonely hut, and whom she worships with a species of
wild idolatry. Maggie knows not why it is, and yet to her there is a
peculiar fascination about that strange old woman, with her snow-white
hair, her wrinkled face, her bony hand, and wild, dark eyes, which,
when they rest on her, have in them a look of unutterable tenderness.

Regularly each day, when the sun nears the western horizon, Maggie
steals away to the cottage, and the lonely woman, waiting for her on
the rude bench by the door, can tell her bounding footstep from all
others which pass that way. She does not say much now herself; but the
sound of Maggie's voice, talking to her in the gathering twilight, is
the sweetest she has ever heard; and so she sits and listens, while
her hands work nervously together, and her whole body trembles with a
longing, intense desire to clasp the young girl to her bosom and claim
her as her own. But this she dare not do, for Madam Conway's training
has had its effect, and in Maggie's bearing there is ever a degree of
pride which forbids anything like undue familiarity. And it was this
very pride which Hagar liked to see, whispering often to herself,
"Warren blood and Conway airs--the two go well together."

Sometimes a word or a look would make her start, they reminded her so
forcibly of the dead; and once she said involuntarily: "You are like