him, to fill her heart and imagination, and her thoughts reverted to him now; how, when she had made his fortune, she would take it all to him; how he would look, what he would say.  This was a little picture the child was never weary of imagining to herself.  She filled it in with a hundred different backgrounds, to suit the fancy of the moment; she tinted it with the brightest colours.  Out in the vague future, into which no one can venture to look without some point on which to rest the mind, this little scene had gradually become at once the end of her present hopes, the beginning of another life, of which, indeed, she knew nothing, but that it lay in a sort of luminous haze of success and happiness.  She never doubted she would attain it; it was not an affair of the imagination only, it was to be a most certain reality; she had arranged it all in those long weeks gone by, and now that the beginning was actually made, she was ready to look at it from the most practical point of view.  Taking out her little purse, she began to count her money for at least the fiftieth time, as she walked along in the darkness.

“I have here twenty-six francs,” she said to herself; “out of these, I must pay my journey to Spa.  Why should I not go to Spa on foot?  It cannot be a very long way; I remember that papa sometimes went backwards and forwards twice in the day from Chaudfontaine.  I have already come a great way, and I am not in the lest fatigued.  If I could do that, I should save a great deal of money—­not that I am afraid I shall not have plenty without that; ten francs would be sufficient, but it will be perhaps safer if I can keep fifteen.  Let me see; I must pay for my room at Spa.  I wonder whether Madame Bertrand is still the landlady at the Hotel de Madrid.  Also I must have some breakfast and some dinner; all this, however, will not cost me ten francs.  I imagine I could still take the train from Chaudfontaine to Spa.  Ah, I am getting very tired; I wonder if I have much further to go.  I think I must rest a little while.”

Madelon, in fact, but lately recovered from her fever, and for many months unused to much exercise, was in no sort of condition for a six or seven miles’ walk.  She had started with great courage, but it seemed to her that she had already been on her journey quite an indefinite length of time, and that she must be near the end, whilst in fact she had only accomplished half the distance.  She would sit down for a short time, she thought, and then the rest would soon be accomplished, and she looked about for a seat of some kind.  The road hitherto could hardly have been called lonely, for houses had been scattered on either side, and part of the way had led through a large village, where, from some uncurtained window, from some cafe or restaurant, long gleams of light had shot across the road, revealing for an instant the little figure passing swiftly along, glad to hide again in the obscurity beyond.  But all this was left behind now, and as far as she could make out, she was quite in the open country, though in the darkness she could hardly distinguish objects three yards off.  She found a big stone however, before long, and sitting down on it, leaning her head against a tree, in five minutes the child was soundly asleep.