'

The woman caught her arm, and drawing it before her own eyes, hid them
against it, and wept. Not like a woman, but like a stern man surprised
into that weakness; with a violent heaving of her breast, and struggle
for recovery, that showed how unusual the emotion was with her.

She submitted to be led into the house, and, evidently more in gratitude
than in any care for herself, washed and bound the injured place.
Harriet then put before her fragments of her own frugal dinner, and when
she had eaten of them, though sparingly, besought her, before resuming
her road (which she showed her anxiety to do), to dry her clothes before
the fire. Again, more in gratitude than with any evidence of concern
in her own behalf, she sat down in front of it, and unbinding the
handkerchief about her head, and letting her thick wet hair fall down
below her waist, sat drying it with the palms of her hands, and looking
at the blaze.

'I daresay you are thinking,' she said, lifting her head suddenly, 'that
I used to be handsome, once. I believe I was--I know I was--Look here!'
She held up her hair roughly with both hands; seizing it as if she would
have torn it out; then, threw it down again, and flung it back as though
it were a heap of serpents.

'Are you a stranger in this place?' asked Harriet.

'A stranger!' she returned, stopping between each short reply, and
looking at the fire. 'Yes. Ten or a dozen years a stranger. I have had
no almanack where I have been. Ten or a dozen years. I don't know this
part. It's much altered since I went away.'

'Have you been far?'

'Very far. Months upon months over the sea, and far away even then.
I have been where convicts go,' she added, looking full upon her
entertainer. 'I have been one myself.'

'Heaven help you and forgive you!' was the gentle answer.

'Ah! Heaven help me and forgive me!' she returned, nodding her head at
the fire. 'If man would help some of us a little more, God would forgive
us all the sooner perhaps.'

But she was softened by the earnest manner, and the cordial face so full
of mildness and so free from judgment, of her, and said, less hardily:

'We may be about the same age, you and me. If I am older, it is not
above a year or two. Oh think of that!'

She opened her arms, as though the exhibition of her outward form would
show the moral wretch she was; and letting them drop at her sides, hung
down her head.

'There is nothing we may not hope to repair; it is