ood this. She saw the dark, cloaked figures of her
friends standing in the storm at a distance, and she knew the
meaning of their upraised hands; but she had no heart to answer the
signal of sympathy. Alone, she stood by the small open grave and saw
it filled. The rain beat on it, and she was glad that it beat on her.
It was with difficulty, and only with some affected anger, the
two men who had buried the child got her to return to her home.

How vacant it was! How unspeakably lonely! The stormy dreariness
outside the cot, the atmosphere of sorrow and loss within it, were
depressing beyond words. And what can be said of the loneliness
and sorrow within the soul? But in every bitter cup there is one drop
bitterest of all; and in Nanna's case this was David's neglect and
apparent desertion. She had received no message from him, nor had
he come near her in all her trouble. Truly, he must have broken
the law to do so; but Nanna was sure no town ordinance would have
kept her from David's side in such an hour, and she despised that
obedience to law which could teach him such cowardly neglect.

Day after day passed, and he came not. The fever was by this time in
all the cottages around her, and the little hamlet was a plague-spot
that every one avoided. But, for all that, Nanna's heart condemned
her cousin. She tried him by her own feelings, and found him guilty
of unpardonable selfishness and neglect. And oh, how dreary are
those waste places left by the loved who have deserted us! With
what bitter tears we water them! Vala and David had been her last
tie to love and happiness. "Thank God," she cried out in her misery,
"it can only be broken once!"

Vala had been in her grave a week--a week of days that turned the
mother's heart gray--before Nanna heard a word of comfort. Then once
more David lifted the latch of the cot and entered her presence.
She was sitting still and empty-handed, and her white face and the
quivering of her lips pierced him to the heart.

"Nanna! Nanna!" he said.

Then she rose, and looked round the lonely room, and David understood
what she meant.

"Nanna! Nanna!" was still all that he could say. He could find no
words fit for such sorrow; but there was the truth to speak, and
that might have some comfort in it. So he took her hands in his,
and said gently:

"Nanna! dear Nanna! your husband is dead."

"I am glad of it!" she answered. "He killed Vala twice over." Her
voice was low and weary, a