one tied by blood to whom to
apply, who would counsel, assist, afford a refuge. A nameless girl,
brought up by the parish, with--as far as she was aware--but one
relative in the world, her mother's sister, whose name she knew
not, and whose existence she could not be sure of--she was indeed
alone as no other could be.

The lake lay before her steely and cold.

The chill wind hissed and sobbed among the bulrushes, and in the
coarse marsh grass that fringed the water on all sides except that
of the dam.

The stunted willows shed their broad-shaped leaves that sailed and
drifted, formed fleets, and clustered together against the bank.

The tree bole on which she was seated was rotting away; a huge
fleshy fungus had formed on it, and the decaying timber emitted a
charnel-house smell.

Now the babe in Mehetabel's arms was quiet. It was asleep. She
herself was weary, and quivering in all her limbs, hot and yet
cold, with an aguish feeling. Her strength of purpose was failing
her. She was verging on despair.

She could not remain with Betty Chivers without paying for her
lodging and for her food. The woman did but just maintain herself
out of the little school and the post-office. She was generous and
kind, but she had not the means to support Mehetabel, nor could
Mehetabel ask it of her.

What should she do? What the silk manufacturer had said was quite
true. The babe stood in her way of getting employment, and the
babe she must not leave. That little life depended on her, and
her time, care, thought must be devoted to it.

Oh, if now she could but have had that fifteen pounds which Simon
Verstage in his providence had given her on her wedding day! With
that she would have been easy, independent.

When Jonas robbed her of the sum he cut away from her the chance
of subsistence elsewhere save in his house--at all events at such
a time as this.

She looked dreamily at the water, that like an eye exercised a
fascination on her.

Would it not be well to cast herself into this pool, with her
babe, and then both would be together at rest, and away from the
cruel world that wanted them not, that rejected them, that had
no love, no pity for them?

But she put the thought resolutely from her.

Presently she noticed the flat-bottomed boat usually kept on the
pond for the convenience of fishers; it was being propelled over
the stream in her direction. A minute later, a man seated in the
boat ran it against the bank an