ng accidentally made the acquaintance of the old black
mammy, she had been favored with a thrilling narration of all that her
daughter had suffered from the persecution of ghosts and the attempt at
kidnapping.

It was a terrible shock to the mother's heart, and after that she could
not believe that Dainty had eloped. She was sure that the girl had been
stolen away, and perhaps murdered.

Oh, the curse of poverty! How it goaded the poor mother's heart!

Too poor to spend a penny in search of the beloved only child who had
met such a mysterious fate, alone in the world, and almost friendless,
she journeyed sorrowfully back to Richmond, only to find that a fire on
the previous night had destroyed the cottage where her furniture was
stored, and that she had no shelter for her head and no work for her
hands. Was it any wonder her poor brain went wild?

CHAPTER XXVII.

IT SEEMED LIKE SOME BEAUTIFUL DREAM WHEN SHE
ENTERED THE GATES IN THE CHILLY SUNSET OF A
WINDY OCTOBER DAY.

"Thank Heaven! the crisis,
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last--
The fever called 'Living'
Is conquered at last!"

The day came, late in September, when the autumn leaves were turning red
and gold, that Dainty Chase opened wide her startled blue eyes upon the
world again.

She had closed them consciously over six weeks ago in the gloomy dungeon
beneath Ellsworth Castle, when, pressing to her desperate lips the
bitter draught of death, she had bidden the cruel world farewell.

In the long weeks of illness and delirium that followed, many things had
come and gone without her knowledge; and now, when consciousness
returned again; there was a dazed look in the beautiful pansy-blue eyes
that stared wide and dark out of her wan and wasted face, with the blue
veins wandering plainly beneath the transparent skin.

"Where am I?" she gasped, faintly, putting her weak little hands up to
her head, and wondering in a bewildered way what made her hair feel so
thin and short and curly, like that of a year-old infant.

The fact was, that Sairy Ann Peters had been compelled to cut off all
of Dainty's golden tresses to stay the progress of the devastating
fever, and she had anticipated with womanly grief the sadness of the
hour when the girl should realize her cruel loss.

She came quickly to the bedside and took the little trembling hands in
her toil-hardened but motherly ones, and said,