e of
exquisite exultation. The miracle was at hand--and she rushed upon it.

"Ted!" It was not a whisper this time, but a cry, and the boy turned
sharply. But Sheila had already started forward, calling wildly:
"_Mother! Mother! Mother!_"

And though the woman was still but a distant figure, she heard that
piercing call and answered it with one as clear and passionate:

"_My little girl! I'm coming! I'm coming!_"

For an instant Ted stood motionless, struck to the earth by that simple
horror of the unusual, the abnormal, which the very sane and
unimaginative always feel. Then, with a single bound, he overtook
Sheila and laid a detaining hand on her shoulder: "Sheila, _stop_!
It's Crazy Lisbeth! I know her voice!"

He was right. The advancing figure was not the beautiful mother-spirit
of Sheila's dream, but a flesh and blood mother who, years before, had
lost her husband and only child, and become crazed by her grief. Ever
since then her heart had been wandering on a piteous quest for her
dead, and her wits with it. And because she was very poor and quite
harmless, suffering only the illusion that she would sooner or later
find her husband and little daughter, the town was kind to her; set her
to work when she would; fed her when she would not work; and left her
free for her sad and futile search.

Sheila and Ted knew her well and no fear of her had ever touched them
before, but now, as she came onward with her insanity strong upon her,
both terror and repugnance seized on Ted.

"She thinks you're her child," he said angrily. "And no wonder! What
made you do such a thing?"

Sheila turned to him with her explanation on her lips--the whole
confession of her dream and her momentary belief that it had come
true--but at sight of him looking at her so protectingly and yet so
severely, her impetuous words faltered and grew cold.

"I--I was thinking of my mother," she stammered shyly.

The unexpected reply embarrassed him. He wanted to scold her, but at
this mention of her dead mother he could not. So he only dug his foot
into the ground and gazed toward Lisbeth, who was now almost upon them,
stumbling in her happy haste.

"We can't run away from her," said Sheila.

"She thinks you're her child!" he protested again, but less harshly.

"Yes," admitted Sheila gently, "like I thought she--" And then, at
some sudden counsel of her heart, she exclaimed: "You stay here. I'll
know what to do!"

It se