again; she must see him. So she stood there with this persistent
dread running through her brain.

Suddenly, in the lane by the house, she heard a voice talking to
Joel,--the huckster-girl. What a weak, cheery sound it was in
the cold and fog! It touched her curiously: broke through her
morbid thought as anything true and healthy should have done.
"Poor Lois!" she thought, with an eager pity, forgetting her own
intolerable future for the moment, as she gathered up some
breakfast and went with it down the lane. Morning had come;
great heavy bars of light fell from behind the hills athwart the
banks of gray and black fog; there was shifting, uneasy,
obstinate tumult among the shadows; they did not mean to yield to
the coming dawn. The hills, the massed woods, the mist opposed
their immovable front, scornfully. Margret did not notice the
silent contest until she reached the lane. The girl Lois,
sitting in her cart, was looking, attentive, at the slow surge of
the shadows, and the slower lifting of the slanted rays.

"T' mornin' comes grand here, Miss Marg'et!" she said, lowering
her voice.

Margret said nothing in reply; the morning, she thought, was gray
and cold, like her own life. She stood leaning on the low cart;
some strange sympathy drew her to this poor wretch, dwarfed,
alone in the world,--some tie of equality, which the odd childish
face, nor the quaint air of content about the creature, did not
lessen. Even when Lois shook down the patched skirt of her
flannel frock straight, and settled the heaps of corn and
tomatoes about her, preparatory for a start, Margret kept her