parting crowd, and the white-faced child, phantom-like, in its midst. She
sat up, shaken anew by the horror of it, trying to put it from her.

The carriage was now empty. All the other travellers had dismounted, and
she seemed to be rushing through the summer night alone. For the long
daylight was nearly done. The purple of the June evening was passing into
the more mysterious purple of the starlight; a clear and jewelled sky
hung softly over valleys with "seaward parted lips," over woods with the
wild rose bushes shining dimly at their edge; over knolls of rocky
ground, crowned with white spreading farms; over those distant forms to
the far north where the mountains melted into the night.

Her heart was still wrung for the orphaned child--prized yesterday, no
doubt--they said he was a good father!--desolate to-day--like herself.
"Daddy!--where's Daddy?" She laid her brow against the window-sill and
let the tears come again, as she thought of that trembling cry. For it
was her own--the voice of her own hunger--orphan to orphan.

And yet, after this awful day--this never to be forgotten shock and
horror--she was not unhappy. Rather, a kind of secret joy possessed her
as the train sped onward. Her nature seemed to be sinking wearily into
soft gulfs of reconciliation and repose. Froswick, with its struggle and
death, its newness and restlessness, was behind her--she was going home,
to the old house, with its austerity and peace.

Home? Bannisdale, home? How strange! But she was too tired to fight
herself to-night--she let the word pass. In her submission to it there
was a secret pleasure.

... The first train had come in by now. Eagerly, she saw Polly on the