out be two or three good steps from that thar
brick-colored house."

"Oh, clear over there? Well," I said, "I'll go over if Lou Desmonde will
go with me."

"I will go, only never call me that again. Matthias calls me Mas'r
Louis, and he says I remind him of a mighty nice fellow down in South
Carliny," said Louis.

"Yis, sah, you does," said Matthias.

Telling mother and Aunt Hildy what we were going out to find, we
started.

It was a very cold day, and through our warm clothing the winds of March
pierced the marrow of our bones. We found the woman, who proved to be,
as Matthias had said, nearly frozen. Louis took her right in his arms to
the nearest shelter, Mr. Goodwin's, the brick-colored house, and his
good, motherly wife had her put into the large west-room, where the
spare bed was made so temptingly clean, and with such an airy feather
mattress, that, light as she was, the poor girl sank into it almost out
of sight. Matthias brought wood and made a fire on the hearth, and Mrs.
Goodwin, Louis and I worked hard for an hour chafing her purple limbs,
her swelled feet and hands, and at last she turned her head uneasily,
and murmured:

"The baby's dead--she is dead and I am going to her."

Then a few words of home and some pictures.

"Myself! myself!" she'd cry, "my picture; yes, my hair is beautiful; my
golden curls, he said; and my baby's hair; let me put it here."

And she passed into a sleep from which it would seem she could never
waken. We sent Matthias back to tell mother, and say that we should both
stay all night if necessary. This girl could not be more than twenty,
we thought. Her fingers were small and tapering, and on her right hand
she wore a ring set with several diamond stones. Her dress was of silk,
and her shawl fine but thin. Her head covering had doubtless fallen off
and then been carried by the wind, for we saw nothing of it. She was a
beautiful picture as she lay there, for the blood had started and her
cheeks were flushed with fever, her lips parted, showing a set of teeth,
small, white and regular. Who could she be? Where did she come from? It
was about an hour after she fell asleep that she stirred, wakened, and
this time opened her eyes in which a conscious light was gathering.

"Where am I? What is it?"

Mrs. Goodwin stepped near her, Louis retreated from the room, and I kept
my seat by the hearth.

"Dead, dead, I was dying but I am not dead; do tell me," she said,
putting both