ey kissed her. They essayed to
comfort her. They thrust upon her gifts of fruit and flowers and
dainties for her lunch.

They bore her wraps out to the cumbersome vehicle which was to convey
her to Lexington, the nearest town which at that time boasted of a
railroad. They placed her comfortably, turning again and again to give
her another kiss and to bid her good-by and God-speed.

It was as if her heartstrings wrenched asunder at the jerk of the
wheels that started the huge stage onward.

"Good-by, good-by!" she cried out, her pale face at the window.

"Good-by," they answered, and Mansy Storm, running alongside, said to
her:

"You give my love to Seth, Celia. Don't you fo'get."

Then breathlessly as the stage moved faster:

"If evah the Good Lawd made a man a mighty little lowah than the
angels," she added, "that man's Seth."

The old stage rumbled along the broad white Lexington pike, past
houses of other friends, who stood at gates to wave her farewell.

It rumbled past little front yards abloom with flowers, back of which
white cottages blinked sleepily, one eye of a shuttered window open,
one shut, past big stone gates which gave upon mansions of more
grandeur, past smaller farms, until at length it drew up at the
tollgate.

Here a girl with hair of sunshine, coming out, untied the pole and
raised it slowly.

"You goin' away, Miss Celia?" she asked in her soft Southern brogue,
tuneful as the ripple of water. "I heah sumbody say you was goin'
away."

Celia smothered a sob.

"Yes," she answered, "I am goin' away."

"It's a long, long way out theah to the West," commented the girl
wistfully as she counted out the change for the driver, "a long, long
way!"

As if the way had not seemed long enough!

Celia sobbed outright.

"Yes," she assented, "it is a long, long way!"

"I am sawy you ah goin', Miss Celia," said the girl. "Good-by. Good
luck to you!" And the stage moved on, Celia staring back at her with
wide sad eyes. The girl leaned forward, let the pole carefully down
and fastened it. As she did so a ray of sunshine made a halo of her
hair.

Celia flung herself back into the dimness of the corner and wept out
her heart. It seemed to her that, with the letting down of that pole,
she had been shut out of heaven.

CHAPTER II.

[Illustration]

In all her life Celia had not travelled further from her native town
than Lexington, which was thirty miles away. It was not necessary. Sh