She dropped from the window to the ground.  The watch-dog knew her and forbore to bark.  He thrust his cold nose into her wasted hand, and wagging his tail looked up inquiringly into her face.  There was something of human sympathy in the expression of the generous brute.  It went to the heart of the poor wanderer.  She leant down and kissed the black head of the noble animal.  A big bright tear glittered among his shaggy hair, and the moonbeams welcomed it with an approving smile.

Like a ghost Mary glided down the garden path, overgrown with rank weeds, and she thought that the neglected garden greatly resembled the state of her soul.  A few necessary wants had alone been attended to.  The flower-beds were overgrown and choked with weeds—­the fruit-trees barren from neglect and covered with moss.  “But He can make the desolate place into a fruitful field,” said Mary.  “The wilderness, under his fostering care, can blossom like the rose.”

She crossed the lane, and traversing several lonely fields she came to the park near the old Hall, within whose precincts the gothic church, erected by one of the ancestors of the Hurdlestones, reared aloft its venerable spire.  How august the sacred building looked in the moonlight! how white the moonbeams lay upon the graves!  Mary sighed deeply, but hers was not a mind to yield easily to superstitious fears.  She had learned to fear God, and there was nothing in his beautiful creation which could make her tremble, save the all-seeing eye which she now felt was upon her.

Passing the front of the church, where all the baptized children of the village for ages had found their place of final rest, she stepped behind a dark screen of yews at the back of the church, and knelt hastily upon the ground beside a little mound of freshly turned sods.  Stretching herself out upon that lowly bed, and embracing it with passionate tenderness, the child of sin and sorrow found a place to weep, and poured out her full heart to the silent ear of night.

The day was breaking, when she slowly rose and wiped away her tears.  Regaining the high road, she was overtaken by a man in a wagon, who had been one of the crowd that had been to look at the murdered man.  He invited Mary to take a seat in the wagon, and finding that he was going within a few miles of Norgood, she joyfully accepted the offer—­and before Godfrey and her brother recovered from their drunken debauch, or found that she was missing, she was near the end of her journey.

CHAPTER XXII.

    The lyre is hush’d, for ever hush’d the hand,
    That woke to ecstacy its thrilling chords;
    And that sweet voice, with music eloquent,
    Sleeps with the silent lyre and broken heart.—­S.M.

“Why do you look so sad, Juliet,” said Captain Whitmore to his daughter, as they stood together at the open window, the morning after her perilous meeting with Mary Mathews in the park.  “Have I said anything to wound your feelings?”