.

Gradually she, too, felt herself yielding to the fascination and mystery
of the place and the solitude that encompassed her. Beyond the pleasant
shadows where she sat, she saw the great world of mountain and valley
through a dreamy haze that seemed to rise from the depths below and
occasionally hang before the cavern like a veil. Long waves of spicy
heat rolling up the mountain from the valley brought her the smell of
pine-trees and bay, and made the landscape swim before her eyes. She
could hear the far-off cry of teamsters on some unseen road; she could
see the far-off cloud of dust following the mountain stagecoach, whose
rattling wheels she could not hear. She felt very lonely, but was not
quite afraid; she felt very melancholy, but was not entirely sad; and
she could have easily awakened her sleeping companions if she wished.

No; she was a lone widow with nine children, six of whom were already in
the lone churchyard on the hill, and the others lying ill with measles
and scarlet fever beside her. She had just walked many weary miles that
day, and had often begged from door to door for a slice of bread for the
starving little ones. It was of no use now--they would die! They would
never see their dear mother again. This was a favorite imaginative
situation of Polly's, but only indulged when her companions were asleep,
partly because she could not trust confederates with her more serious
fancies, and partly because they were at such times passive in her
hands. She glanced timidly around. Satisfied that no one could observe
her, she softly visited the bedside of each of her companions, and
administered from a purely fictitious bottle spoonfuls of invisible
medicine. Physical correction in the form of slight taps, which they
always required, and in which Polly was strong, was only withheld now
from a sense of their weak condition. But in vain; they succumbed to the
fell disease,--they always died at this juncture,--and Polly was left
alone. She thought of the little church where she had once seen a
funeral, and remembered the nice smell of the flowers; she dwelt with
melancholy satisfaction of the nine little tombstones in the graveyard,
each with an inscription, and looked forward with gentle anticipation to
the long summer days when, with Lady Mary in her lap, she would sit on
those graves clad in the deepest mourning. The fact that the unhappy
victims at times moved as it were uneasily in their graves, or snored,