r white hair, and kindling up the diamonds in her lap to
a bed of living coals. She was perfectly safe with those treasures, even
in that lonely house, for in the pouring rain no human being was likely
to go about from his own free will. But one poor fellow, whose child was
desperately sick, did pass the house, and saw the blaze of a fire
breaking through a window, where the shutters were dashing to and fro on
their hinges, and found breath to say, as he sped on in search of a
doctor:

"So the cedar cottage has got another tenant at last. I wonder who it
is?"

When the man went by to his work, the next morning, he saw the shutters
swaying to and fro yet, and wondering at it, went into the enclosure, in
hopes of meeting some of the new inmates; but everything was still, the
doors were fastened, and through the kitchen window he saw nothing but a
heap of ashes on the hearth, and an old chair, torn to pieces, standing
before it.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE OLD COUNTESS.

When the old countess of Carset threw out her flag from the battlements
of Houghton castle, it could be seen from all the country around, for
the grim old pile was built upon the uplands, and the gray towers rose
up from the groves of the park like the peaks of a mountain.

For many a long year that broad flag had streamed like a meteor over the
intense greenness of oaks and chestnuts; for, when the head of the house
was at home, the crimson pennant was always to be seen floating against
the sky, and over that sea of billowy foliage. The old lady of Houghton
had not been absent from the castle in many years, for she was a
childless woman, and so aged, that a home among her own people was most
befitting her infirmities and her pride.

One day, as the sun was going down behind those massive castle towers,
filling the sky so richly with gold and crimson, that the red flag was
lost among its fiery billows, an old woman stood on the highway, with a
hand uplifted to shade her eyes, as she searched for the old flag.

There was dust upon her leathern shoes and on the black folds of her
alpaca dress, for she had walked from the railway station, and the roads
were dry.

"Ah, how the trees have grown!" she said, mournfully, dropping her hand.
"I never, never thought to be so near Houghton and not see the flag. Is
my lady dead?"

The old woman was so distressed by the thought, that she sat down on a
bank by the wayside, and over her came that dry, hard fo