world? It is a cruel fall for an apple of the eye to the ground, for
its law of gravitation is of the soul, and its fall shocks the
infinite. Little Ellen felt herself sorely hurt by her fall from
such fair heights; she was pierced by the sharp thorns of selfish
interests which flourish below all the heavenward windows of life.

Afterwards, when her mother and father tried to make her tell them
why she ran away, she could not say; the answer was beyond her own
power.

There was no snow on the ground, but the earth was frozen in great
ribs after a late thaw. Ellen ran painfully between the ridges which
a long line of ice-wagons had made with their heavy wheels earlier
in the day. When the spaces between the ridges were too narrow for
her little feet, she ran along the crests, and that was precarious.
She fell once and bruised one of her delicate knees, then she fell
again, and struck the knee on the same place. It hurt her, and she
caught her breath with a gasp of pain. She pulled up her little
frock and touched her hand to her knee, and felt it wet, then she
whimpered on the lonely road, and, curiously enough, there was pity
for her mother as well as for herself in her solitary grieving.
"Mother would feel pretty bad if she knew how I was hurt, enough to
make it bleed," she murmured, between her soft sobs. Ellen did not
dare cry loudly, from a certain unvoiced fear which she had of
shocking the stillness of the night, and also from a delicate sense
of personal dignity, and a dislike of violent manifestations of
feeling which had strengthened with her growth in the midst of the
turbulent atmosphere of her home. Ellen had the softest childish
voice, and she never screamed or shouted when excited. Instead of
catching the motion of the wind, she still lay before it, like some