t spanned the stream. It was a
narrow and a slippery bridge, but she flitted across it with the secure
grace of some woodland thing, and, staff in hand, advanced towards the
men. Between them and the western sun she stood still, a dark figure
against a halo of gold light, and threw an intent and searching glance
over the unbroken green of the marsh and the blue of the waters beyond.
Then with a wild laugh she came up to them and cast her staff wreathed
with dark ivy upon the ground.

"The road is not here," she cried. "Here is all green grass, and beyond
is the weary, weary, weary sea! There is no long, bright, shining road
to Paradise." She sat down beside her staff, and taking her chin into
her hand, stared fixedly at the ground.

The men gathered around her, with the exception of the Muggletonian,
who, after audibly comparing her to the Witch of Endor, turned on his
side and drew his cap over his eyes as if to shut out the hated sight.
The convict took up the staff and began to pull from it the strings of
ivy.

"Put it down!" she said quickly.

The man continued to strip it of its leafy mantle.

"Put it down, can't you?" said the youth. "She never lets any one touch
it. She says an angel gave it to her to help her on her way."

With a snarling laugh the convict threw it from him with all his force.
Whirling through the air it struck the water midway from shore to shore.
Margery sprang to her feet with a loud cry. The boy rose also.

"D--n you!" he said, wrathfully. "I'd like to break it over your
misshapen back! Here, Margery, don't fret. I'll get it for you."

He ran to the bank, dived into the water, and in three minutes was back
with the dripping mass in his arms. He gave it into Margery's hands,
saying kindly while he shook himself like a large spaniel; "There! it
isn't hurt a mite!"

With a cry of delight Margery seized the "angel's gift" and kissed the
hand that restored it. Then she turned upon the convict.

"When I go back to my cabin in the woods," she said, solemnly, and with
her finger up, "I shall whistle all the fairy folk into a ring, all the
elves and the pixies, and the little brown gnomes who burrow in the
leaves and look for all the world like pine cones, and I shall tell them
what you did, and to-night they will come to your cabin, and will pinch
you black and blue, and stick thorns into you, and rub you with the
poison leaf until you are blotched and swelled like the great bull frog
th