the utter darkness very, very slowly; suddenly her head
again came in contact with the roof; she made a few steps farther on, and
then found that to proceed at all she must go on her hands and knees. She
bent down and peered through the darkness.

"We'll go on, Tiger," she said, and, holding the dog's collar and
clinging to him for protection, she crept along the narrow passage.

Suddenly she gave an exclamation of joy--at the other end of this gloomy
passage was light--faint twilight surely, but still undoubted light,
which came down from some chink in the outer world. Annie came to the end
of the passage, and, standing upright, found herself suddenly in a room;
a very small and miserable room certainly, but with the twilight shining
through it, which revealed not only that it was a room, but a room which
contained a heap of straw, a three-legged stool, and two or three cracked
cups and saucers. Here, then, was Mother Rachel's lair, and here she must
look for Nan.

The darkness had been so intense that even the faint twilight of this
little chamber had dazzled Annie's eyes for a moment; the next, however,
her vision became clear. She saw that the straw bed contained a bundle;
she went near--out of the wrapped-up bundle of shawls appeared the head
of a child. The child slept, and moaned in its slumbers.

Annie bent over it and said, "Thank God!" in a tone of rapture, and then,
stooping down, she passionately kissed the lips of little Nan.

Nan's skin had been dyed with the walnut-juice, her pretty, soft hair had
been cut short, her dainty clothes had been changed for the most ragged
gipsy garments, but still she was undoubtedly Nan, the child whom Annie
had come to save.

From her uneasy slumbers the poor little one awoke with a cry of terror.
She could not recognize Annie's changed face, and clasped her hands
before her eyes, and said piteously:

"Me want to go home--go 'way, naughty woman, me want my Annie."

"Little darling!" said Annie, in her sweetest tones. The changed face had
not appealed to Nan, but the old voice went straight to her baby heart;
she stopped crying and looked anxiously toward the entrance of the room.

"Tum in, Annie--me here, Annie--little Nan want 'oo."

Annie glanced around her in despair. Suddenly her quick eyes lighted on a
jug of water; she flew to it, and washed and laved her face.

"Coming, darling," she said, as she tried to remove the hateful dye. She
succeeded partly, and w