ose days the sorrowful and sick waited in vain for the
sound of Nest's lame approach. But what she had to endure was only known
to God, for she never complained. If she had given up the charge of
Mary, or if the neighbors had risen, out of love and care for her life,
to compel such a step, she knew not what hard curses and blows--what
starvation and misery, would await the poor creature.

She told of Mary's docility, and her affection, and her innocent little
sayings; but she never told the details of the occasional days of wild
disorder, and driving insanity.

Nest grew old before her time, in consequence of her accident. She knew
that she was as old at fifty as many are at seventy. She knew it partly
by the vividness with which the remembrance of the days of her youth
came back to her mind, while the events of yesterday were dim and
forgotten. She dreamt of her girlhood and youth. In sleep she was once
more the beautiful Nest Gwynn, the admired of all beholders, the
light-hearted girl, beloved by her mother. Little circumstances
connected with those early days, forgotten since the very time when they
occurred, came back to her mind in her waking hours. She had a sear on
the palm of her left hand, occasioned by the fall of a branch of a tree,
when she was a child; it had not pained her since the first two days
after the accident; but now it began to hurt her slightly; and clear in
her ears was the crackling sound of the treacherous, rending wood;
distinct before her rose the presence of her mother tenderly binding up
the wound. With these remembrances came a longing desire to see the
beautiful fatal well, once more before her death. She had never gone so
far since the day when, by her fall there, she lost love, and hope, and
her bright, glad youth. She yearned to look upon its waters once again.
This desire waxed as her life waned. She told it to poor crazy Mary.

"Mary!" said she, "I want to go to the Rock Well. If you will help me, I
can manage it. There used to be many a stone in the Dol Mawr on which I
could sit and rest. We will go to-morrow morning before folks are
astir."

Mary answered briskly, "Up, up! To the Rock Well! Mary will go. Mary
will go." All day long she kept muttering to herself, "Mary will go."

Nest had the happiest dream that night. Her mother stood beside her--not
in the flesh, but in the bright glory of a blessed spirit. And Nest was
no longer young--neither was she old--"they reckon not b