r-cold night.

She made her way as best she could to the station which, fortunately
enough, was not far distant. The station master was old and anxious to
get home, and therefore paid little heed to the little dark-robed figure
who bought a ticket to New York, and soon after crept silently aboard of
the train which steamed into the little depot of the hamlet, almost
buried in the snowdrifts across the hills.

Weak and faint from her recent illness, Faynie, the beautiful, petted
little heiress of a short time before, huddled into a corner of the seat
by the door, and drawing her veil carefully over her face, wept silently
and unheeded as the midnight express bore her along to her destination.

She was going home to Beechwood; going back to the home she had left in
such high spirits to join the lover who was to be all in all to her
forever more; the lover who was to shield her henceforth and forever
from the world's storms, and was to be all devotion to her and love her
fondly until death did them part. And this had been the end of it. Her
high hopes lay in ruins around her. Her idol had been formed of
commonest clay, and lay crumbled in a thousand fragments at her feet.

Surely, no young girl's love dream ever had such a sad awakening, and
was so cruelly dispelled.

She would go home to her haughty old father, tell him all, then lie down
at his feet and die. That would end it all. Even in that moment lines
she had once read came back to her with renewed meaning:

"And this is all! The end has come at last!
The bitter end of all that pleasant dream,
That cast a hallow o'er the happy past,
Like golden sunshine on a summer stream.

"Sweet were the days that marked life's sunny slope,
When we together drew our hearts atune,
And through the vision of a future hope,
We did not dream that they would pass so soon.

"In happy mood fair castles we upreared,
And thought that life was one long summer day;
We had no dread of future pain, nor feared
That shadows e'er should fall athwart our way.

"But sunken rocks lie hid in every stream,
And ships are wrecked when just in sight of land;
So we to-day wake from our pleasant dream
To find our hopes were builded on the sand.

"I do not blame you that you do not keep
The troth you plighted e'er your heart you knew;
Better the parting now than wake to weep,
When time has robbe