e spirit of unrest, the wind moaned and soughed. Now and then a
withered leaf of last year went by her with a light rustle and stealthy
motion. Desolate as the heart within her was the waste ground.

Bit by bit the gray sky lightened; the east was fretted over with pink,
and a freshness was breathed into the air. Then she began to run. Behind
her were all her pretty dreams, and they were dead. Behind her was the
love she had cherished, and that was dead, too. From a joyful vision she
had awakened to find the idol cold at her breast.

Running hard along the gloomy road, under the empty sky, through the
surging wind, the outcast girl cried in her tearless grief as a little
child cries for the mother who is in her grave--never knowing its loss
until it has grown tired, and weary, and sick, and the night is very
near.

She came to a brick-kiln that stood back from the road. Its wreathing
smoke coiled slowly upward in the smoke-like atmosphere. The red haze
drew her to it, as it drew the shivering waifs of the air. Cold and
tired, she crept up and stood some minutes in the glow; but a step fell
on her ear from behind the kiln, and she stole away like a guilty thing.

Away, away, she knew not where. On, on, she knew not why.

The day had dawned now. In the brightness of morning her heart sunk
lower. Draggled and soiled, her hair still damp with the dew, and the
odor of night in her dress, she walked on in the golden radiance of the
risen sun.

Oh, to bury herself forever, and yet not to die--no, no, not to die!

At a cross-road there was a finger-post, and it read, "To Kilburn."
Beyond it there was a wood, and the sunlight played on the pine-trees
and reddened the dead leaves that still clung to an oak. She was warm
now, but, oh! so tired. Behind the ambush of a holly-bush, close to the
road, Mercy crouched down on a drift of withered leaves at the foot of a
stout beech. She dozed a little and started. All was quiet. Then weary
nature conquered fear, and overcame sorrow, and she slept.

And sleep--that makes kings and queens of us all--gracious sleep, made a
queen of the outcast girl, a queen of love; and she dreamed of her home
among the mountains.

Mercy was still sleeping when a covered wagon, such as carriers use,
came trundling along the road. The driver, a bright-eyed man, with the
freshness of the fields in his face, sat on the front rail and
whistled. His horse shied at something, and this made him get up. He