were ambling languidly on across a green and level
moor. Far away, whether of clouds or hills I could not yet tell, rose
cold towers and pinnacles into the last darkness of night. Above us in
the twilight invisible larks climbed among the daybeams, singing as
they flew. A thick dew lay in beads on stick and stalk. We were alone
with the fresh wind of morning and the clear pillars of the East.

On I went, heedless, curious, marvelling; my only desire to press
forward to the goal whereto destiny was directing me. I suppose after
this we had journeyed about an hour, and the risen sun was on the
extreme verge of the gilded horizon, when I espied betwixt me and the
deep woods that lay in the distance a little child walking.

She, at any rate, was not a stranger to this moorland. Indeed,
something in her carriage, in the grey cloak she wore, in her light,
insistent step, in the old lantern she carried, in the shrill little
song she or the wind seemed singing, for a moment half impelled me to
turn aside. Even Rosinante pricked forward her ears, and stooped her
gentle face to view more closely this light traveller. And she pawed
the ground with her great shoe, and gnawed her bit when I drew rein
and leaned forward in the saddle to speak to the child.

"Is there any path here, little girl, that I may follow?" I said.

"No path at all," she answered.

"But how then do strangers find their way across the moor?" I said.

She debated with herself a moment. "Some by the stars, and some by the
moon," she answered.

"By the moon!" I cried. "But at day, what then?"

"Oh, then, sir," she said, "they can see."

I could not help laughing at her demure little answers. "Why!" I
exclaimed, "what a worldly little woman! And what is your name?"

"They call me Lucy Gray," she said, looking up into my face. I think
my heart almost ceased to beat.

"Lucy Gray!" I repeated.

"Yes," she said most seriously, as if to herself, "in all this snow."

"'Snow,'" I said--"this is dewdrops shining, not snow."

She looked at me without flinching. "How else can mother see how I am
lost?" she said.

"Why!" said I, "how else?" not knowing how to reach her bright belief.
"And what are those thick woods called over there?"

She shook her head. "There is no name," she said.

"But you have a name--Lucy Gray; and you started out--do you
remember?--one winter's day at dusk, and wandered on and on, on and
on, the snow falling in the dark, till--Do