was mirrored below--as steel.

She feared lest her knees should fail, and she should fall. She
dared not seat herself on a ridge of sand lest she should lack
power to rise again. When she came to a crabbed fir she leaned
against it and stooped to kiss her babe.

"Oh, my golden darling! My honeycomb! How cold you are! Cling
closer to your mother's breast. She would gladly pour all the
warmth out of her heart into your little veins."

Then on again, amidst the trilling of the natterjacks and the
croaking of the frogs. Because of their noise she could not hear
the faint breath of her infant. Although she walked slowly, she
panted, and through panting could not distinguish the pulsation of
the little one she bore from the bounding of her own veins. At last
she saw, gleaming before her--Thor's Stone, and she hasted her
steps to reach it.

Then she remembered that she was without a hammer. That mattered
not. She would strike on the anvil with her fingers. The
spirits--whatever they were--the good people--the country folk
called them, would hear that. She reached the stone, and sank
exhausted below it She was too weary to do more than lie, with
her child in her lap, and hold up her face bathed in sweat, for
the cool evening wind to wipe it, and at the same time feed with
fresh breath her exhausted lungs.

Then looking up, she saw the little star again, the only one in
the light-suffused heavens, but it twinkled faintly, with a feeble
glitter, feeble as the frail life of the child on her lap.

And now a strange thing occurred.

As she looked aloft suddenly the vault was pervaded with a rosy
illumination, like the flushing of a coming dawn, and through this
haze of rosy light, infinitely remote, still flickered the tiny
spark of the star.

What was this? Merely some highly uplifted vapor that caught the
sun after it had long ceased to shine on the landscape.

There were even threads of amber traced in this remote and
attenuated glory--and, lo--in that wondrous halo, the little star
was eclipsed.

Suddenly--with an unaccountable thrill of fear, Mehetabel bent
over her babe--and uttered a cry that rang over the Mere.

The hand she had laid on Thor's Stone to tap struck it not. She
had nothing to ask; no wish to express. The one object for which
she lived was gone from her.

The babe was dead in her lap.

Her hand fell from the stone.

CHAPTER LII.

THE ROSE-CLOUD.

Joe Filmer, driving old Clutch, d