trace them, even if they should desire to do so.

As the summer days grew shorter, and the hour of Anna's ordeal grew
near, Mrs. Moore had but one prayer in her heart, and that was that her
life might be spared till her child's troubles were over. Since Anna's
illness in the early spring, she had utterly disregarded herself. No
complaint was heard to pass her lips. Her time was spent in one
unselfish effort to make her daughter's life less painful. But the
strain of it was telling, and she knew that life with her was but the
question of weeks, perhaps days. As her physical grasp grew weaker,
her mental hold increased proportionately, and she determined to live
till she had either closed her child's eyes in death, or left her with
something for which to struggle, as she herself was now struggling.

But the poor mother's last wish was not to be granted. In the
beginning of September, just when the earth was full of golden promise
of autumn, she felt herself going. She felt the icy hand of death at
her heart and the grim destroyer whispered in her ear: "Make ready."
Oh, the anguish of going just then, when she was needed so sorely by
her deceived and deserted child.

"Anna, darling," she called feebly, "I cannot be with you; I am
going--I have prayed to stay, but it was not to be. Your child will
comfort you, darling. There is nothing like a child's love, Anna, to
make a woman forget old sorrows--kiss me, dear----" She was gone.

And so Anna was to go down into the valley of the shadow of death
alone, and among strangers.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN DAYS OF WAITING.

"Bent o'er her babe, her eyes dissolved in dew,
The big drops mingled with the milk he drew
Gave the sad presage of his future years--
The child of misery, baptized in tears."--_John Langhorne_.

The days of Anna's waiting lagged. She lost all count of time and
season. Each day was painfully like its predecessor, a period of time
to be gone through with, as best she could. She realized after her
mother's death what the gentle companionship had been to her, what a
prop the frail mother had become in her hour of need. For a great
change had come over the querulous invalid with the beginning of her
daughter's troubles, the grievances of the woman of the world were
forgotten in the anxiety of the mother, and never by look or word did
she chide her daughter, or make her affliction anything but easier to
bear by her gentle presence.