red through the window and saw that
it was passing over water; the lights blurred in the dark, shining
mirror below.

"Oh, this is wrong! I should never have come this way!" she moaned, and
knew that she was lost, lost and alone.

When she dared look through the window again the water was gone, and she
felt the motion of the car to be slower. Soon it had stopped. Trembling,
she rose from her corner and walked unsteadily to the door.

"Will you kindly tell me where we are? I have made a mistake," she said
to the man who had refused to take her money.

He looked at her and spoke to his companion.

"I suppose we're booked for the usual half-hour wait, Jim," he said; "I
don't see any green light."

She cried aloud and rushed out of it.

"I think I am mad!" she wept. "I wish I had died with my head on that
crimson cushion! What will happen to me? That cruel doctor will have
killed me!"

"What is it, madam? Can I help you?"

A soft voice spoke close to her and she grasped the arm of a slender,
girlish creature who turned two brown, startled eyes up at her. Now it
was for joy that she wept, and clung to the girl, whom her confused
brain took to be the brown-eyed housemaid who had spoken to her last.

"Indeed, indeed, you can help me!" she cried. "I am lost--I have come
into the country, it seems, a long way, in a terrible street-car where
no one would speak to me, and I ought to be in the city, in my home, for
I am afraid I am very ill: I seem to be in a sort of fever. Do you know
where we are? I have never been here. When will it be day?"

"Very soon, madam," said the little maid, supporting her firmly for all
her slenderness, "and I know well where we are. Come home with me; Karen
and I plan to be at the Farm by daybreak."

She looked, and there beside them stood a tiny donkey, saddled with a
sort of leather chair, and almost at the level of his rough, thin
shoulder stood a great sleek-coated hound.

"Let me help you into the saddle, madam," the little maid went on, "and
you will find how well you sit there. I am very strong, and I can walk
beside."

As in a dream she let the girl half lift her into the seat, and the
donkey walked easily along, the hound stepping nobly by them, his
mistress leading the sure-footed beast.

There were no lights but the great moon and the kindly little stars, and
no streets but narrow lanes, winding through feathery maples and stocky
oaks that would be sulphur-yellow and iron