nor the left-laughed not, spoke not. her fellow-workers, but not of them. The very shabbiness of her cotton gown, her old gray shawl, her straw hat half covered with a cheap vail, served to emphasize the marvelous beauty of her face and figure. Under the coarse straw shone a coil of hair golden as the silk of ripe corn. Through the faded vail gleamed a skin like alabaster, and a pair of great pansy-dark eyes full of something strange; unutterable-sad as death. Few persons in Millbridge ever passed this girl without turning to look after her.

66

'You're tired to-night, Miss Smith," sighed an emaciated, hollow-eyed operative, as she hurried along at the heels of the person in the gray shawl.

"Yes-a little, Lizzie," answered the latter.

"God knows it's a hard life!" said Lizzie, with a cough that seemed to rend her thin lungs. "I've been spitting blood all day. I sha'n't last much longer here. Oh," with sudden childish eagerness, "do you know, Miss Smith, that there's a new music-teacher come to Millbridge, and some of the girls have been saving their money, and they are going to club together, and hire a piano, and take lessons after work-hours. Isn't that heavenly? How I wish I was of 'em; but you see, what with losing days and days with sickness, and buying medicine continual, I never have a cent to spare."

"Poor Lizzie !" sighed Miss Smith, gently.

The girl went on. No other person spoke to Miss Smith. She was no favorite with the operatives. For two years she had worked in the mills, and lodged with the herd of common men and women at the great boarding-house by the river, yet she was still a stranger in Millbridge. Nobody knew anything of her past life nobody could boast of the smallest degree of intimacy with her. She did not lack civility, yet she had a way of keeping her fellow-laborers at a frigid distance.

Miss Smith did not hasten, as usual, to her boardinghouse to-night, but turned mechanically from the open street into a secluded footpath that stretched along the river-side.

As soon as she had passed beyond the reach of curious eyes, she sank suddenly down in the faded fern of the bank, tore off her hat and vail, and threw back her old shawl, like a person suffocating.

"Oh, ye gods!

Why do you make us love your goodly gifts, And snatch them straight away?""

She murmured the lines under her breath. The sunset died in the west, the river grew gray with twilight. A boat passed along its current, the oars splashing softly in the water. Miss Smith did not see it. She was sitting very still among the faded ferns, plucking absently at their brittle, frostbitten blades.

What was it that aroused her at last? The boat was coming back, going down - stream toward the mills. Through the dusky silence the echo of a voice was wafted to her ears: "I must go to-morrow, Denham."

Only those commonplace words-part of a sentence, evidently. Denham was one of the mill-owners, a hospitable millionaire. His pleasure-boats were often on the river, and usually filled with guests.

Miss Smith leaped to her feet. The hue of ashes fell upon her face, a choking sensation filled her throat. On went the boat, into a shelter of a clump of willows-she could barely distinguish its receding outline.

What strange trick had her imagination played her?what morbid fancy had got possession of her senses? Was the buzz and whirr of the mills affecting her head?

"My God! Ethel Greylock!"

She had not heard that name for many a day. She turned quickly and looked at the speaker.

"Don't be afraid of me !" stammered the new musicteacher of Millbridge, as he fell back from her a step. "I am not afraid," she said, coldly.

"Thank God !" he cried. "I was mad at our last

meeting, but I am sane enough now. How came you in this place, and this disguise ?" pointing in an agitated way to her cotton dress.

She tied on her hat hurriedly, and drew the shawl about her shoulders again.

"It is no disguise," she replied; "I am an operative in the mills here, earning my living by hard work, and my name is not Ethel Greylock, but plain Miss Smith."

They stood face to face once more—Arthur Kenyon and the girl whose life he had once attempted. The man looked old and haggard and shabby. Time was now taking vengeance on him for the success with which he had so long withstood its ravages. There were crow'sfeet under his languishing eyes, and streaks of gray in his abundant curls.

"I heard of your change of fortune," he said, with something like a shudder. "The affair got into the newspapers-they are always picking up such things. I was not particularly surprised, for I had always known you could not be Iris Greylock's daughter. I was once that woman's husband, you see, and if she had been your real mother, Heaven knows I should never have approached you as a lover! They cast you out, of course—the whole precious lot of them, with the baronet at their head? Faugh! Such love was not worth the having, Ethel !" "I decline to talk with you about myself or my former friends," answered Miss Smith, with the haughty air that reminded him of the days of her power and splendor. "You must understand, without being told, that the sight of you is abhorrent to me!"

He winced.

"You are very hard! I am earning my living as a music-teacher-I came to Millbridge a few days ago to pursue that calling, never dreaming of meeting you here. Ah, you have not forgiven the cowardly assault which I made upon you two years ago!" He flung up his right hand wildly. This is the hand I raised against your

life; the deed ought to have withered it for ever. But remember, I had lost you-a misfortune great enough to turn any man's brain. I loved you more than my own soul, but I was mad-this is my sole excuse. Surely you ought to pardon though the rest of the world condemn me, Ethel !"

"I pardon you," she answered, sternly. "But Ethel Greylock has ceased to exist, and Miss Smith does not know you-can never know you !"

"That's a poor sort of forgiveness," he complained, weakly.

"It is all I can give you."

He cowered away from her a step.

"You have me at a great disadvantage, Ethel. What shall I-what can I do, to prove my repentance, and win your full pardon ?"

"Leave me," she answered, pitiless as Nemesis, "and never return: at any time, nor in any place, dare to ap

He hung his head.

"It is for you to command and for me to obey," he said, in a stifled voice, and he turned and went away toward the town, never looking back.

Miss Smith lingered a while by the river, afraid to follow immediately in Kenyon's footsteps, lest she should encounter again this dark ghost of her past. When the danger seemed no longer imminent she started for her boarding-house.

The moon had not yet risen, and the stars shone faint and small in the far purple. The little footpath was now very dark and very lonely. Only the sad crickets chirped in its bordering grasses, and the river rippled softly on the bank. Involuntarily Miss Smith quickened her steps.

She had almost reached the street when two figures came sauntering toward her from the direction of the mills. It was impossible to distinguish their faces in the darkness, but the red spark of a cigar, the odor of the lighted weed, betrayed their sex. As the pair brushed by Miss Smith in the narrow path one chanced to jostle her.

"Pardon !" he said, politely, and disappeared in the night beyond.

her throat. She sprang to her feet, in that small, dark attic, with a confused sense of something awful pressing down upon her.

Ah, the room was not dark, for a red, infernal glare wrapped its one window, and played over the four bare, whitewashed walls. The noise which had aroused Miss Smith was a blow, dealt by some hand, upon the door. Even as she stood clutching her bedpost helplessly, scarcely knowing whether she was still dreaming or not, the assault was repeated; hinges and locks gave way, the door crashed down into the room, and over it leaped a man-scorched, blackened, breathless. A terrific volume of smoke rushed into the chamber with him. He caught Miss Smith in his arms.

"The house is in flames !" he said. "They told me you were up here. Everybody else has escaped. Some girls in a room below upset a lamp in a frolic. Ah, God help me!" with a cry of despair which she remembered long after; "how am I to save you, Ethel ?"

She felt one awful thrill of fear, like the thrust of a sword; then, with the blind instinct of self-preservation, she broke from Arthur Kenyon and ran toward the smokeshrouded doorway. He drew her back.

"The staircase fell behind me," he said. "You cannot escape that way. The old house is like tinder-its walls can stand but a minute more. Outside, the street is full of people, but whether they can help us or not remains to be seen."

a closet so small that, luckily, it could not be shared with any other boarder.

She was shaking in every limb, and her eyes had the look of some hunted wild animal's. She locked the door hurriedly behind her. She must go, she must leave Millbridge by the first morning train !-leave the place where she had found work and shelter for two years, and fly forth again into the wide world. She opened a drawer in her toilet-table. There lay the money which she had saved from her labor in the mills-not much, but enough to take her to another home, and supply her needs till she could find new employment.

Mechanically she began to pack together her small belongings. While doing this she heard loud peals of laughter, mingled sometimes with a hollow cough, rising from the chamber below her own. The mill-girls had gathered for a frolic in the room of Lizzie, the consumptive-they often did so, but never had their mirth jarred on Miss Smith's ears as it did to-night. When her preparations were complete she extinguished her lamp, threw herself on her bed, without removing any of her garments. for she meant to be up and away by dawn, and fell straightway into a deep sleep.

Cruel dreams beset her. She heard the voice of Sir Gervase Greylock calling to her across a wide black river, whose current she could not pass. She was back again at Greylock Woods, moving down the great rooms in bridal white, with hands full of orange-flowers, and Strauss's waltzes throbbing upon the perfumed air around her. Then she bent over the white face of Godfrey Greylock, as he lay dead before the chancel-rail, in the light of the stained-glass window. Then she was flying for life, over gray lonesome tracks of salt marshes, to the low-ceiled keeping-room of Cat's Tavern. where Mercy Poole's furry family rushed upon her, spitting and mewing. Presently the snarls of the felines became a dull roar in Miss Smith's ears. This noise was succeeded

room, at its very top, alone with midnight and death, she looked in Arthur Kenyon's begrimed but fearless face, in something like amazement.

"I

"Why did you risk your life like this ?" she said. might have perished in my sleep if you had not aroused me-that would have been a painless, merciful end. Save yourself somehow. As for me," the terror had all gone from her now, and she spoke quietly, almost cheerfully, "ah, life is over for me! I may as well close it here and now, as in any place or at any time."

The fire was curling around the doorway, and thrusting red hands into the room. After it came the smoke, in a black, strangling storm. The shouts and cries of firemen and spectators, assembled in the street far below, mingled with the din of roaring flames. Kenyon drew Miss Smith to the one window of the garret.

"There's but an instant between us and death!" he

said, quickly. "Why did I risk my life to find you, Ethel? Because I owed you this much by way of atonement. None dared enter the house to search for younone but me!" exultantly. "I was glad of that. I said to myself, 'I will save her or die with her! She shall see now that I loved her better than my own self-she shall give me the full pardon which she refused a few hours ago!'"

He seized a chair, and dashed out the small narrow window. At the same moment a ladder was planted against the wall outside-the cap of a fireman appeared at the top.

"Be quick!" he urged.

Kenyon lifted Miss Smith to the level of the casement, and forced her into the outstretched arms of the man. Something impelled her to look back. It was all the work of an instant. She saw Kenyon framed in the window, with the flames making a red background behind him. His hand touched the sill, and then-then-as the floor under his feet broke up like an eggshell, and went

down beneath him, he clutched once at empty air, fell back and vanished.

A great sea of fiamo surged resistlessly over the spot where he had stood, licked up the broken window with a hundred forked tongues-a storm of sparks soared up to the midnight sky, and all was over.

He was gone, and nothing more was ever seca of Iris Greylock's divorced husband, save a handful of charred bones, gathered by stranger hands from the ruins of the house by Millbridge river.

Down fell the wall, and the ladder with it, hurling the fireman and Miss Smith to the ground together. The latter was lifted up insensible and carried to a neighboring refuge, opened by some kind Samaritans to receive the homeless operatives.

When consciousness returned Miss Smith found herself confronted by the memory of Kenyon's tragic sacrifice, and certain grim facts that well-nigh took her breath. She was absolutely penniless. Her earthly possessions had perished with the house. Even the clothing had been nearly burned from her body in her perilous escape. How were her immediate and pressing needs to be supplied?

All the ensuing day the injuries which she had received kept her a prisoner indoors, but as night fell, and the necessities of another day approached, she arose, borrowed such garments as she needed, and prepared to go out.

Attached to a chain about her neck were two valuable rings, the last relics that she possessed of her past. They had been the gift of Godfrey Greylock. Money she must have, and at once.

She took the jewels and went out into the streets of Millbridge, to search for some place where she might dispose of them.

Through a sombre twilight Miss Smith hurried by the blackened ruins of the house where Kenyon had perished, turned a corner and plunged into a small, dark shop, in the one window of which watches were displayed, and various kinds of jewelry. A clerk was just lighting the lamps as Miss Smith walked up to the showcase, and laid upon it her two rings.

"I wish to dispose of these," she faltered.

The clerk threw down his lucifer and stared at the girl's pale, flawless face, and great ropes of yellow hair; then he examined the rings in a business-like way.

"What value do you set upon them, miss ?" he asked. She shuddered.

"I know very little about their actual value. Give me whatever you please."

"The proprietor has gone to supper. You'd better come again when he is here, miss-I'm not authorized to make such purchases."

The disappointment brought a rush of tears to her eyes. She picked up the rings to go-one slipped from her hold and rolled away over the floor. As she turned to recover it she became aware that somebody had entered the shop, and was standing close behind her the man whose voice she had heard in the darkness by the river, the man who had once gone to Blackport Church with her, to utter marriage vows-the man whom she had thought to be thousands of miles across the sea-Sir Gervase Greylock! There he stood in that little Millbridge shop, looking straight in her face, with the grave, gray, overmastering eyes that she remembered only too well!

"Have I found you at last-at last !”

Those were his first words. Then he took her hands quickly in his own, bent down, and kissed her on her white, trembling lips.

"My betrothed wife!" he said, gravely and firmly, "you have never ceased to be that, you know!" "Oh!" she gasped, striving to draw back from him, "do not mock me! Remember Hannah Johnson's story -r member all that stands between us now!"

le smiled grandly. His hold upon her tightened. "Nothing stands between us. For two years I have been seeking you the world over. You escaped me on our luckless marriage-day, but you will never do it again. Nan! I have you now, to hold and to keep for ever! The Greylock pride is not so strong as the Greylock love. I care not whether you sprung from a gutter or a palaceenough for me to know that you are, and will always be, the best, the loveliest, the sweetest of women! Under any circumstances, it's not possible for you to be less than this, and more you could not be, if you were a born princess. Oh, my darling, my darling! I ask but this— do you love me still ?”

"I love you still!" sobbed Nan, with the light of heaven shining in her great, glad eyes.

"What brought you to Millbridge?" she said to him, after they had talked of many, many things.

"A mere chance," he answered. "Colonel Denham, whose acquaintance I made at a club in town, invited me here to visit his mills. I have been his guest for three days, and was on my way to the station to take the train back to Boston, when I saw and recognized you as you entered the shop. Now let me ask how you came to choose an insignificant village, less than a hundred miles from Blackport, to be your hiding-place, and how could you resist the countless advertisements, in which Polly and I entreated you to come back to your home and friends!"

"I never saw them," she sighed; "newspapers were scarce at the boarding-house. I never dreamed that anybody at Greylock Woods could be wishing for my return. As I was flying from the villa, I chanced to overhear two workingwomen, passengers upon the same train with me, talking of a lack of operatives in the factories of Millbridge. That conversation led me to the mills.”