tched interval of concealment and
flight; she had not thought of this period of being an unknown outcast.
A sense of ignominy began to crush her. It was a new thing for her
to avoid a human eye: she felt guilty, ashamed, terror-stricken; and,
doubly veiling her face, she sat with her eyes closed, and her head
turned away, like one asleep or ill. The day dragged slowly on. Now and
then she left the train, and bought a new ticket to carry her farther.
Even had there been suspicions of her flight, it would have been
impossible to have traced her, so skilfully had she managed. She had
provided herself with a time-table of the entire route, and bought
new tickets only at points of junction where several roads met, and no
attention could possibly be drawn to any one traveller.

At night she reached the city, where she had planned to remain for some
days, to make purchases. When she entered the hotel, and was asked to
register her name, no one who saw the quick and ready signature which
she wrote would have dreamed that it was not her own:

"MRS. HIBBA SMAILLI, St. Mary's, Canada."

"One of those Welsh women, from St. Mary's, I guess," said the clerk;
"they all have those fresh, florid skins when they first come over
here." And with this remark he dismissed Hetty from his mind, only
wondering now and then, as he saw her so often coming in, laden with
parcels, "what a St. Mary's woman wanted with so many things."

During these days, while Hetty was unflinchingly going forward with all
her preparations for her new home, the home she had left was a scene of
terrible dismay and suffering.

It was long after dark when little Raby, breathless and sobbing, had
burst open the sitting-room door, crying out:

"Auntie's drowned in the lake. I know she is; or else a bear's eaten her
up. She said she'd be back in an hour. And here's her watch,"--opening
his little hot hand, in which he had held the watch tight through all
his running,--"she gave it to me to hold till she came back. And she
said it would be five; and I stayed till seven, and she never came;
and a man brought me home." And Raby flung himself on the floor, crying
convulsively.

His father and mother tried to calm him, and to get a more exact
account from him of what had happened; but, between their alarm and his
hysterical crying, all was confusion.

Presently, the man entered who had brought Raby home in his wagon. He
was a stranger to them all. His narrative merely