constructed a
tragedy."

She resolutely put the whole matter aside, as she sat in her room,
rocking pensively. Her own lamp had not been filled and was burning
dimly, so she put it out and sat in the darkness, listening to the rain.

She had not closed the shutters and did not care to lean out in the
storm, and so it was that, when the whistle of the ten o'clock train
sounded hoarsely, she saw the little glimmer of light from Miss
Ainslie's window, making a faint circle in the darkness.

Half an hour later, as before, it was taken away. The scent of lavender
and sweet clover clung to Miss Hathaway's linen, and, insensibly
soothed, Ruth went to sleep. After hours of dreamless slumber, she
thought she heard a voice calling her and telling her not to forget the
light. It was so real that she started to her feet, half expecting to
find some one standing beside her.

The rain had ceased, and two or three stars, like timid children, were
peeping at the world from behind the threatening cloud. It was that
mystical moment which no one may place--the turning of night to day. Far
down the hill, ghostly, but not forbidding, was Miss Ainslie's house,
the garden around it lying whitely beneath the dews of dawn, and up in
the attic window the light still shone, like unfounded hope in a woman's
soul, harking across distant seas of misunderstanding and gloom, with
its pitiful "All Hail!"

III. Miss Ainslie

Ruth began to feel a lively interest in her Aunt Jane, and to regret
that she had not arrived in time to make her acquaintance. She knew that
Miss Hathaway was three or four years younger than Mrs. Thorne would
have been, had she lived, and that a legacy had recently come to her
from an old friend, but that was all, aside from the discoveries in the
attic.

She contemplated the crayon portraits in the parlour and hoped she was
not related to any of them. In the family album she found no woman whom
she would have liked for an aunt, but was determined to know the worst.

"Is Miss Hathaway's picture here, Hepsey?" she asked.

"No'm. Miss Hathaway, she wouldn't have her picter in the parlour,
nohow. Some folks does, but Miss Hathaway says't'aint modest."

"I think she's right, Hepsey," laughed Ruth, "though I never thought of
it in just that way. I'll have to wait until she comes home."

In the afternoon she donned the short skirt and heavy shoes of her
"office rig," and started down hill to explore the village. It w