and the objects about her
began to seem unreal. But the cold water revived her, and she was soon
herself again, listening while Marian talked of heat and sun-strokes,
with an evident forgetfulness of the peasant girl knitting in the
sunshine; but Jerrie soon recurred to the subject and asked, rather
abruptly: 'Was there a stove in that house--a tall, white stove, in a
corner of one of the old rooms--say the kitchen--and a high-backed
settee?'

Marian stared at her a moment in surprise, and then replied:

'Oh, I know what you mean--those unwieldy things in which they sometimes
put the wood from the hall. No; there was nothing of that kind, though
there was an old settee by the kitchen fire-place, but not a tall stove.
Mr. Carter had modernized the house, and set up a real Yankee
stove--Stewart's, I think they called it.'

'Was the picture in the kitchen?' Jerrie asked next.

'No,' Marian replied, 'it was in a little, low apartment which must once
have been the best room.'

'And was there no theory with regard to it! It seems strange that any
one should leave it there if he cared for it,' Jerrie said.

'Yes, it does,' Marian replied; 'but all Mr. Carter knew was that the
people of whom he bought the house said the portrait was there when they
took possession, and that it had been left to apply on the back rent;
also that the original was dead. He (Mr. Carter) had bought the picture
with the house, and offered to take it down, but I would not let him. It
was such a sweet, sunny, happy face that it did me good to look at it,
and wonder who the young girl was, and if her life were ever linked with
that of the stranger watching her.'

Again the faintness came upon Jerrie, for she could see so plainly on
the sombre wall the picture of the sweet-faced girl, with the long
stocking in her lap--a very long stocking she felt sure it was, but
dared not ask, lest they should think her question a strange one. Of the
stranger in the back yard watching the young girl she had no
recollection, but her heart beat wildly as she thought:

'Was that Mr. Arthur, and was the young girl Gretchen?'

How fast the lines touching her past had widened about her since she
first saw the likeness in the mirror, and her confused memories of the
past began to take shape and assume a tangible form.

'I will find that house, and that picture, and that Mr. Carter, and the
people who lived there before him,' she said to herself; and then again,
a