river or the myriad little creatures
moving about her. She was thinking how much she would like to frighten
them all at home, and make them anxious about her; she felt she would like
to walk on and on until twilight and darkness fell, and she and the moor
were left to their loneliness together. It was all very foolish; but as
long as there are boys and girls, or men and women, these moods will come
to them, to be fought down and overcome; and we must remember that to the
sufferer they do not seem foolish at the time.

How far she did walk she had no idea at the time; it seemed to her it was
miles and miles;--in reality it was only about a mile and a half,--and the
sun was going down, and she was beginning to admit doubts to her mind as
to whether she should turn back or not, when suddenly, in a hollow in the
moor before her, she saw, though at first she could hardly believe her
eyes, a real little house with real smoke coming out of the chimney on the
thatched roof.

If it had not been for the smoke, whirled and beaten about by the breeze,
she would have thought the house was not really a human habitation, but a
bit of the moor itself risen up, so brown and rough and weather-beaten it
looked under its old lichen-grown thatch. But the smoke was real smoke,
and Esther, stepping nearer, saw one window lit by the leaping, cheery
glow of a fire.

Fascinated and surprised, she drew nearer and nearer. Before the cottage
was a little garden surrounded by a sturdy railing and a thick-set,
close-clipped holly-hedge, within the shelter of which whole beds of
crocuses and daisies and polyanthuses bloomed gaily. The crocuses were all
asleep now, their little petals fast closed, and the daisies too, but the
polyanthuses looked bravely with their beautiful eyes at the fast
darkening sky. Over the cottage walls, as well as on the thatch, lichen
and house-leeks grew, as though to prove it was but a boulder, one of the
many scattered thereabouts in all directions, and not a house at all.

CHAPTER XII.

Ester stood staring fascinated, quite unconscious of the fact that a pair
of bright but dim eyes were peering out at her wonderingly; and she
started, quite guiltily, when presently the cottage door opened, and a
lady came along the garden path towards her.

Esther began to move away, feeling ashamed that she should have stared so
rudely; but the lady hearing her, spoke.

"Don't go away, please," she said in a pretty soft v