onged by this time. Troops of people were passing to
and fro. Cabs and omnibuses were rattling hither and thither. At every
turn the crowd became denser and the noise louder. Mercy sat in her
corner, bewildered. The strange city frightened her. For the time it
drove away the memory of her sorrow.

When they reached Covent Garden, Jim, the driver, drew up with a jerk,
and nodded to some of the drivers of similar wagons, and hailed others
with a lusty shout. All was a babel to the girl's dazed sense: laughter,
curses, yelling, whooping, quarreling.

Mercy's head ached. She got down, hardly knowing what to do next. Where
was she to go? In that wilderness of London, more desolate than the
trackless desert, what was she?

She stood a moment on the pavement, her little bundle in her hand, and
all the bewildering scene went round and round. The tears rose to her
eyes, and the glare and noise and the tumult were blotted out.

The next instant she felt herself being lifted back into the wagon, and
then she remembered nothing more.

CHAPTER XII.

Two days later Hugh Ritson entered the convent church of St. Margaret.
It was evening service, and the nave was thronged from chancel to porch.
The aisles, which were bare of seats, were filled only half-way down,
the rest of the pavement being empty save for a man here and there who
leaned lightly against the great columns of the heavy colonnade.

The sermon had already begun. Hugh Ritson walked up the aisle
noiselessly until he came close behind the throng of people standing
together. Then he stood at the side of a column and looked around on
those in the nave.

He was within range of the preacher's voice, but he hardly listened. His
eyes traversed the church until at last they rested on one spot in the
south transept, where a company of nuns sat with downcast eyes half
closed. The face of one of them was hidden beneath her drooping coif;
the rosary held to her breast was gripped with nervous fingers. Near at
hand there was another face that riveted Hugh Ritson's gaze. It was the
face of Greta, radiant in its own beauty, and tender with the devotional
earnestness of parted lips and of lashes wet with the dew of a bruised
spirit.

From these two his eyes never wandered for longer than a minute!
Languidly he listened to the words that floated over the people, and
held them mute. The preacher was a slight young man, emaciated, pale,
with lustrous eyes, and a voice that