together at different
times in such a manner as to lead to no suspicion, and not a human being
ever had the slightest hint that she had planned and meant to carry out
the enterprise which she had now so fortunately begun.

Not till the last straggling house had been long past, not till the
meadows were stretched out behind her as well as before her, spreading
far off into the distance on each side, did she give way to the sense of
wild exultation which was coming fast over her. But then, at last, she
drew a long, long breath, and, standing up in the boat, looked all around
her. The stars were shining over her head and deep down beneath her.
The cool wind came fresh upon her cheek over the long grassy reaches. No
living thing moved in all the wide level circle which lay about her. She
had passed the Red Sea, and was alone in the Desert.

She threw down her oars, lifted her hands like a priestess, and her
strong, sweet voice burst into song,--the song of the Jewish maiden when
she went out before the chorus of, women and sang that grand solo, which
we all remember in its ancient words, and in their modern paraphrase,

"Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!
Jehovah hath triumphed, his people are free!"

The poor child's repertory was limited to songs of the religious sort
mainly, but there was a choice among these. Her aunt's favorites, beside
"China," already mentioned, were "Bangor," which the worthy old New
England clergyman so admired that he actually had the down-east city
called after it, and "Windsor," and "Funeral Hymn." But Myrtle was in no
mood for these. She let off her ecstasy in "Balerma," and "Arlington,"
and "Silver Street," and at last in that most riotous of devotional
hymns, which sounds as if it had been composed by a saint who had a
cellar under his chapel,--"Jordan." So she let her wild spirits run
loose; and then a tenderer feeling stole over her, and she sang herself
into a more tranquil mood with the gentle music of "Dundee." And again
she pulled quietly and steadily at her oars, until she reached the wooded
region through which the river winds after leaving the "Broad Meadows."

The tumult in her blood was calmed, yet every sense and faculty was awake
to the manifold delicious, mysterious impressions of that wonderful June
night, The stars were shining between the tall trees, as if all the
jewels of heaven had been set in one belt of midnight sky. The voices of
the w