"That's allus the way o' it," she shrieked. "As soon as I find me Nora they
snatches me and carries me off, and I have to begin me watchin' and waitin'
and lookin' ag'in."

Alida continued sobbing and trembling violently. One of the awakened patients
sought to assure her by saying, "Don't mind it so, miss. It's only old crazy
Kate. Her daughter ran away from her years and years ago--how many no one
knows--and when a young woman's brought here she thinks it's her lost Nora.
They oughtn't 'a' let her get out, knowin' you was here."

For several days Alida's reason wavered. The nervous shock of her sad
experiences had been so great that it did not seem at all improbable that she,
like the insane mother, might be haunted for the rest of her life by an
overwhelming impression of something lost. In her morbid, shaken mind she
confounded the wrong she had received with guilt on her own part. Eventually,
she grew calmer and more sensible. Although her conscience acquitted her of
intentional evil, nothing could remove the deep-rooted conviction that she was
shamed beyond hope of remedy. For a time she was unable to rally from nervous
prostration; meanwhile, her mind was preternaturally active, presenting every
detail of the past until she was often ready to cry aloud in her despair.

Tom Watterly took an unusual interest in her case and exhorted the visiting
physician to do his best for her. She finally began to improve, and with the
first return of strength sought to do something with her feeble hands. The
bread of charity was not sweet.

Although the place in which she lodged was clean, and the coarse, unvarying
fare abundant, she shrank shuddering, with each day's clearer consciousness,
from the majority of those about her. Phases of life of which she had
scarcely dreamed were the common topics of conversation. In her mother she