Oth, waking fully as she helped him to his room-door, looked anxiously in her face.

“Er’ ye well to-night, chile?” he said.  “Yer look as yer did when yer wor a little baby.  Peart an’ purty yer wor, dat’s true.  Der good Lord loved yer, I think.”

“He loves me now,” she said, softly, to herself, as in her own room she knelt down and thanked Him, and then, undressed, crept into the white trundle-bed beside little Pen; and when he woke, and, putting his little arms about her neck, drew her head close to his to kiss her good-night, she cried quietly to herself, and fell asleep with the tears upon her cheek.

Her sister, in the next room to hers, with the same new dream in her heart, did not creep into any baby’s arms for sympathy.  Lizzy Gurney never had a pet, dog or child.  She sat by the window waiting, her shawl about her head in the very folds McKinstry had wrapped it, motionless, as was her wont.  But for the convulsive movement of her lips now and then, no gutta-percha doll could be more utterly still.  As the night wore down into the intenser sleep of the hours after midnight, her watch grew more breathless.  The moon sank far enough in the west to throw the beams directly across her into the dark chamber behind.  She was a small-moulded woman, you could see now:  her limbs, like those of a cat, or animals of that tribe, from their power of trance-like quiet, gave you the idea of an intense vitality:  a gentle face,—­pretty, the villagers called it, from its waxy tint and faint coloring,—­you wished to do something for her, seeing it.  Paul Blecker never did:  the woman never spoke to him; but he noted often the sudden relaxed droop of the eyelids, when she sat alone, as if some nerve had grown weary:  he had seen that peculiarity in some women before, and knew all it meant.  He had nothing for her; her hunger lay out of his ken.

It grew later:  the moon hung now so low that deep shadows lay heavy over the whole valley; not a breath broke the sleep of the night; even the long melancholy howl of the dog down in camp was hushed long since.  When the clock struck two, she got up and went noiselessly out into the open air.  There was no droop in her eyelids now; they were straight, nerved, the eyes glowing with a light never seen by day beneath them.  Down the long path into the cornfield, slowly, pausing at some places, while her lips moved as though she repeated words once heard there.  What folly was this?  Was this woman’s life so bare, so empty of its true food, that she must needs go back and drag again into life a few poor, happy moments? distil them slowly, to drink them again drop by drop?  I have seen children so live over in their play the one great holiday of their lives.  Down through the field to the creek-ford, where the stones lay for crossing, slippery with moss:  she could feel the strong grasp of the hand that had led her over there that night; and so, with slow, and yet slower step, where the path had been rocky, and