sehold was, to all appearance, asleep at the usual early hour.
When all seemed quiet, Myrtle lighted her lamp, stood before her mirror,
and untied the string that bound her long and beautiful dark hair, which
fell in its abundance over her shoulders and below her girdle.

She lifted its heavy masses with one hand, and severed it with a strong
pair of scissors, with remorseless exaction of every wandering curl,
until she stood so changed by the loss of that outward glory of her
womanhood, that she felt as if she had lost herself and found a brother
she had never seen before.

"Good-by, Myrtle!" she said, and, opening her window very gently, she
flung the shining tresses upon the running water, and watched them for a
few moments as they floated down the stream. Then she dressed herself in
the character of her imaginary brother, took up the carpet-bag in which
she had placed what she chose to carry with her, stole softly
down-stairs, and let herself out of a window on the lower floor, shutting
it very carefully so as to be sure that nobody should be disturbed.

She glided along, looking all about her, fearing she might be seen by
some curious wanderer, and reached the cove where the boat she had
concealed was lying. She got into it, and, taking the rude oars, pulled
herself into the middle of the swollen stream. Her heart beat so that it
seemed to her as if she could hear it between the strokes of the oar.
The lights were not all out in the village, and she trembled lest she
should see the figure of some watcher looking from the windows in sight
of which she would have to pass, and that a glimpse of this boat stealing
along at so late an hour might give the clue to the secret of her
disappearance, with which the whole region was to be busied in the course
of the next day.

Presently she came abreast of The Poplars. The house lay so still, so
peaceful,--it would wake to such dismay! The boat slid along beneath her
own overhanging chamber.

"No song to-morrow from the Fire-hang-bird's Nest!" she said. So she
floated by the slumbering village, the flow of the river carrying her
steadily on, and the careful strokes of the oars adding swiftness to her
flight.

At last she came to the "Broad Meadows," and knew that she was alone, and
felt confident that she had got away unseen. There was nothing,
absolutely nothing, to point out which way she had gone. Her boat came
from nobody knew where, her disguise had been got