y days, nor
years where she was gone to dwell;" and her mother stretched out her
arms to her with a calm, glad look of welcome. She awoke; the woodlark
was singing in the near copse--the little birds were astir, and rustling
in their leafy nests. Nest arose, and called Mary. The two set out
through the quiet lane. They went along slowly and silently. With many a
pause they crossed the broad Dol Mawr; and carefully descended the
sloping stones, on which no trace remained of the hundreds of feet that
had passed over them since Nest was last there. The clear water sparkled
and quivered in the early sun-light, the shadows of the birch-leaves
were stirred on the ground; the ferns--Nest could have believed that
they were the very same ferns which she had seen thirty years before,
hung wet and dripping where the water overflowed--a thrush chanted
matins from a holly bush near--and the running stream made a low, soft,
sweet accompaniment. All was the same; Nature was as fresh and young as
ever. It might have been yesterday that Edward Williams had overtaken
her, and told her his love--the thought of his words--his handsome
looks--(he was a gray, hard-featured man by this time), and then she
recalled the fatal wintry morning when joy and youth had fled; and as
she remembered that faintness of pain, a new, a real faintness--no echo
of the memory--came over her. She leant her back against a rock, without
a moan or sigh, and died! She found immortality by the well side,
instead of her fragile, perishing youth. She was so calm and placid that
Mary (who had been dipping her fingers in the well, to see the waters
drop off in the gleaming sun-light), thought she was asleep, and for
some time continued her amusement in silence. At last she turned, and
said,

"Mary is tired. Mary wants to go home." Nest did not speak, though the
idiot repeated her plaintive words. She stood and looked till a strange
terror came over her--a terror too mysterious to be borne.

"Mistress, wake! Mistress, wake!" she said, wildly, shaking the form.

But Nest did not awake. And the first person who came to the well that
morning found crazy Mary sitting, awe-struck, by the poor dead Nest.
They had to get the poor creature away by force, before they could
remove the body.

Mary is in Tre-Madoc workhouse; they treat her pretty kindly, and in
general she is good and tractable. Occasionally the old paroxysms come
on; and for a time she is unmanageable. But some