at once--she would lose something that
she _mustn't_ lose. She must get up now, at once.

"I shall lose Blossom--no, I mean Blossom will lose--oh, yes, Blossom
will lose her legs, if I don't get up," she drowsed, and fell
asleep.

Chapter IV.

Judith awoke with a bewildering sensation of guilt and need of
action. What had happened? What had she done that she ought not to
have done?--or was it something that she ought to? Memory struggled
back to her dimly, then flashed upon her in sudden clearness.

She had taken a school of mackerel--that was what she had done that
was praiseworthy. She had left them down there in the old black dory,
undressed and unpacked--that was the thing she ought not to have done.
That was the awful thing! For if they were not dressed and packed at
once--

"Oh, I shall lose them! I shall lose them!" moaned poor Judith,
sitting up in bed and wringing her hands in the keenness of her
distress. "How could I have _let_ myself fall asleep! How could I
have slept all this time like a log!"

It was very dark, so it must be midnight or later. There was no light
anywhere, on land or sea, or in Judith's troubled soul. To her
remorseful mind all her terrible labor and strain of body had been in
vain; she had gone to sleep and spoiled everything, everything!

Judith had never been so utterly tired out as when she went to sleep;
she had never been so tired as she was now. She felt lame in every
joint and muscle of her body. But her conscience stood up before her
in the dark and arraigned her with pitiless, scathing scorn.

"Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself? See what you've done! All
those beautiful fish lost, when you might have saved them--just by
staying awake and attending to them. A little thing like that! And
you worked so hard to get them--I was proud of you for that. Ah-h, but
I'm ashamed of you now!"

"Don't! don't--you hurt!" sighed Judith, "I'll get up now, this
minute, and go down there. Don't you see me getting up? I've got one
shoe on now."

Judith was not experienced in the dressing of many fish at a time and
the packing of them in barrels for market. At sixteen, how can one
be--and one a girl? But she knew in a rather indefinite way the
importance of having it done promptly. She remembered father's and
the boys' last school of fish--how she had hurried down to the shore
and watched the dory come creeping heavily in, how the boys had
cheered, as they came, how father ha