,
though in the darkness she could hardly distinguish objects
three yards off. She found a big stone however, before long,
and sitting down on it, leaning her head against a tree, in
five minutes the child was soundly asleep.

How long she slept she never knew. Tired out, her repose was
at first profound and unconscious; but presently it began to
be haunted by confused dreams, in which past, present, and
future were mingled together. She dreamt that she was
wandering in some immense vaulted hall, where she had never
been before, and which yet resembled the refectory of the
convent; for long tables were spread as for the evening meal,
and in the twilight, black-robed nuns whose faces she could
never see, were gliding to and fro. And then, how or why she
did not know, they were no longer the deal tables of the
convent, with their coarse white cloths and earthenware
plates, but the long green tables of the Kursaal, with Aunt
Therese as croupier, and all the nuns pushing and raking the
piles of money backwards and forwards. She was amongst them,
and it seemed to her she had just won a great heap of gold;
but when she tried to get it, Aunt Therese, in the character
of croupier, refused to let her touch it. "It is mine; is it
not, papa?" she cried to somebody standing at her side; and
then looking up, saw it was Monsieur Horace; he did not speak,
but gazing at her for a moment, shook his head, and moved away
slowly into the gloom. And then the nuns and Aunt Therese also
seemed to vanish, and she was left alone with the tables and
the money, in the midst of which lay a long figure covered
with a sheet, as she had seen her father the night that he had
died. She did not think of that, however, but ran eagerly up
to the table to take her winnings, when the figure moved, a
hand was put out to seize the gold, and the sheet falling off,
Madelon recognized her dead father's face.

With a shriek she awoke, and sprang up, shivering and
trembling with cold and fright--all the terrors of the night
suddenly come upon her. She looked round; all was as it had
been when she went to sleep; the lonely road, the dark fields,
the trees and hedges; but a breeze had sprung up before the
dawn, and was rustling the leaves and branches; overhead a
star or two was shining in dark rifts, and in the east a
melancholy waning moon was slowly rising, half obscured by
scattered clouds. With a sudden impulse, born of an urgent
sense of utter lonelines