ltogether gave way--just in time, for their
walk was at an end, and they both felt as though the long distance had
been covered by quite a few steps. They had passed close to several
groups of noisy and quarrelsome citizens, and many a funeral train had
borne the plague-stricken dead to the grave by torchlight under their
very eyes, but they had heeded none of these things.

It was not till they reached the garden-gate that they observed what was
going on around them. There they found the gardener and all the
household, anxiously watching for the return of their belated mistress.
Eudoxia too was waiting for them with some alarm. In the house they were
met by Horapollo, but Joanna and Pulcheria returned his greeting with a
cold bow, while Mary purposely turned her back on him. The old man
shrugged his shoulders with regretful annoyance, and in the solitude of
his own room he muttered to himself:

"Oh, that woman! She will be the ruin even of the peaceful days I hoped
to enjoy during the short remainder of my life!"

The widow and her daughter for some time sat talking of Mary. She had bid
them good-night as devotedly and tenderly as though they were parting for
life. Poor child! She had forebodings of the terrible fate to which the
bishop, and perhaps her own mother had predestined her.

But Mary did not look as if she were going to meet misfortune; Eudoxia,
who slept by her side, was rejoiced on the contrary at seeing her so gay;
only she was surprised to see the child, who usually fell asleep as soon
as her little head was on the pillow, lying awake so long this evening.
The elderly Greek, who suffered from a variety of little ailments and
always went to sleep late, could not help watching the little girl's
movements.

What was that? Between midnight and dawn Mary sprang from her bed, threw
on her clothes, and stole into the next room with the night-lamp in her
hand. Presently a brighter light shone through the door-way. She must
have lighted a lamp,-and presently, hearing the door of the sitting-room
opened, Eudoxia rose and noiselessly watched her. Mary immediately
returned, carrying a boy's clothes--a suit, in point of fact, which
Pulcheria and Eudoxia had lately been making as a Sunday garb--for the
lame gardener's boy. The child smilingly tried on the little blue tunic;
then, after tossing the clothes into a chest, she sat down at the table
to write. But she seemed to have set herself some hard task; for now s