stress kept all her finest sheets and underclothes,
tore everything in pieces, and flung them on the floor. Poor Catherine
wrung her hands and wept, for she thought to herself, 'When my lady
comes back and sees all this ruin she will think it is my fault,' and
starting up, she fled through the open door. Then Destiny took all the
pieces and made them whole again, and put them back in the press, and
when everything was tidy she too left the house.

When the mistress reached home she called Catherine, but no Catherine
was there. 'Can she have robbed me?' thought the old lady, and looked
hastily round the house; but nothing was missing. She wondered why
Catherine should have disappeared like this, but she heard no more of
her, and in a few days she filled her place.

Meanwhile Catherine wandered on and on, without knowing very well where
she was going, till at last she came to another town. Just as before,
a noble lady happened to see her passing her window, and called out to
her, 'Where are you going all alone, my pretty girl?'

And Catherine answered, 'Ah, my lady, I am very poor, and must go to
service to earn my bread.'

'I will take you into my service,' said the lady; and Catherine served
her well, and hoped she might now be left in peace. But, exactly as
before, one day that Catherine was left in the house alone her Destiny
came again and spoke to her with hard words: 'What! are you here now?'
And in a passion she tore up everything she saw, till in sheer misery
poor Catherine rushed out of the house. And so it befell for seven
years, and directly Catherine found a fresh place her Destiny came and
forced her to leave it.

After seven years, however, Destiny seemed to get tired of persecuting
her, and a time of peace set in for Catherine. When she had been chased
away from her last house by Destiny's wicked pranks she had taken
service with another lady, who told her that it would be part of her
daily work to walk to a mountain that overshadowed the town, and,
climbing up to the top, she was to lay on the ground some loaves
of freshly baked bread, and cry with a loud voice, 'O Destiny, my
mistress,' three times. Then her lady's Destiny would come and take away
the offering. 'That will I gladly do,' said Catherine.

So the years went by, and Catherine was still there, and every day
she climbed the mountain with her basket of bread on her arm. She was
happier than she had been, but sometimes, when no one saw her,