dge, on which she has ever loved to rest and
dream, leaning rounded arms upon the wooden railings and seeing strange
but sweet things in the bright, hurrying water beneath her eyes.

She has gained the bridge now, and leaning languidly upon its frail
ramparts lets her gaze wander a-field. The little stream, full of
conversation as ever, flows on unnoticed by her. Its charms seem dead.
That belonged to the old life--the life she will never know again. It
seems to her quite a long time since she felt young. And yet only a few
short months have flown since she was young as the best of them--when
even Tommy did not seem altogether despicable as a companion, and she
had often been guilty of finding pleasure in running a race with him,
and of covering him not only with confusion, but with armfuls of scented
hay, when at last she had gained the victory over him, and had turned
from the appointed goal to overwhelm the enemy with merry sarcasms.

Oh, yes, that was all over. All done! An end must come to everything,
and to her light-heartedness an end had come very soon. Too soon, she
was inclined to believe, in an excess of self, until she remembered that
life was always to be taken seriously, and that she had deliberately
trifled with it, seeking only the very heart of it--the gaiety, the
carelessness, the ease.

Well, her punishment has come! She has learned that life is a failure
after all. It takes some people a lifetime to discover that great fact;
it has taken her quite a short time. Nothing is of much consequence. And
yet----

She sighs and looks round her. Her eyes fall upon a distant bank of
cloud overhanging a pretty farmstead, and throwing into bold relief the
ricks of hay that stand at the western side of it. A huge, black crow
standing on the top of this is napping his wings and calling loudly to
his mate. Presently he spreads his wings, and, with a creaking of them
like the noise of a sail in a light wind, disappears over her head. She
has followed his movements with a sort of lazy curiosity, and now she
knows that he will return in an hour or so with thousands of his
brethren, darkening the heavens as they pass to their night lodgings in
the tall elm trees.

It is good to be a bird. No care, no trouble. No pain! A short life and
a merry one. Better than a long life and a sorry one. Yes, the world is
all sorry.

She turns her eyes impatiently away from the fast vanishing crow; and
now they fall upon a perfec