loud settled on
the top of the mountain, which his last rays turned into a rosy gold.
Straight into this cloud the shepherd saw the woman hold her pace, and
in it she vanished. He little imagined that his child was under her
cloak.

He went home as usual in the evening, but Agnes had not come in. They
were accustomed to such an absence now and then, and were not at first
frightened; but when it grew dark and she did not appear, the husband
set out with his dogs in one direction, and the wife in another, to
seek their child. Morning came and they had not found her. Then the
whole country-side arose to search for the missing Agnes; but day after
day and night after night passed, and nothing was discovered of or
concerning her, until at length all gave up the search in despair
except the mother, although she was nearly convinced now that the poor
woman had carried her off.

One day she had wandered some distance from her cottage, thinking she
might come upon the remains of her daughter at the foot of some cliff,
when she came suddenly, instead, upon a disconsolate-looking creature
sitting on a stone by the side of a stream.

Her hair hung in tangles from her head; her clothes were tattered, and
through the rents her skin showed in many places; her cheeks were
white, and worn thin with hunger; the hollows were dark under her eyes,
and they stood out scared and wild. When she caught sight of the
shepherdess, she jumped to her feet, and would have run away, but fell
down in a faint.

At first sight the mother had taken her for her own child, but now she
saw, with a pang of disappointment, that she had mistaken. Full of
compassion, nevertheless, she said to herself:

"If she is not my Agnes, she is as much in need of help as if she were.
If I cannot be good to my own, I will be as good as I can to some other
woman's; and though I should scorn to be consoled for the loss of one
by the presence of another, I yet may find some gladness in rescuing
one child from the death which has taken the other."

Perhaps her words were not just like these, but her thoughts were. She
took up the child, and carried her home. And this is how Rosamond came
to occupy the place of the little girl whom she had envied in the
picture.

VII.

Notwithstanding the differences between the two girls, which were,
indeed, so many that most people would have said they were not in the
least alike, they were the same in this, that each cared