the horses were checked.

"Good God!" he said, "your fingers are crushed."

He pulled off my glove, and turned pale when he saw my purple hand.

"It is nothing," I said.

But I was miserably fatigued, and prayed that the Lake House might come
in sight. We were near the wood, which extended to it, and I was
wondering if we should ever reach it, when he said,--

"You must dismount, and rest under the first tree. We will wait there
for the rest of the party to come up."

I did so. Numerous were the inquiries, when they reached us. Laura,
when she heard the story, declared she now believed in Ellen Pickering.
Redmond gave me a searching look, and asked me if the one-story inn had
good beds.

"I can take a nap, if necessary," I answered, "in one of Mrs. Sampson's
rush-bottomed chairs on the veranda. The croak of the frogs in the pond
and the buzz of the bluebottles shall be my lullaby."

"No matter how, if you will rest," he said, and assisted me to remount.

We rode quietly together the rest of the way. After arriving, we girls
went by ourselves into one of Mrs. Sampson's sloping chambers, where
there was a low bedstead, and a thick feather-bed covered with a
patchwork-quilt of the "Job's Trouble" pattern, a small, dim