er fellow-sufferers. After the long dumb weeks of her stern
sorrow, after that day's revolt of injured sentiment, she felt that it
was worth while to have come here if only to have made some one else, as
Elvira had said, "a little glad."

The dawn came sighing fitfully, long sighs that rose in the distant
fields to the east meeting them in their pilgrimage and dying away
westward; the dawn wept also, scattering her tears upon them in like
transient showers.

Elvira found her own horse. The Danite had used yesterday the animal he
had provided for Susannah.

"But what right have I to his horse?" Susannah began her question
impetuously, but Elvira silenced her.

"Hush! Don't let the other women know that it isn't yours. Poor things,
they will begin to ask why it isn't theirs. Do you think that we are
living on bowing terms, curtseying to each other and saying, 'After you,
madam, if you please'?"

Elvira was changed. Terror had at last done its work. Her pretty
features were drawn with anxiety; her eye glittered.

"I have been baptized," she said to Susannah in hard tones. "When I saw
the water red with blood I went down into it."

Eastward, facing the gusty sobs of the winter morning, they went. The
road was soft, and hundreds of feet treading in front of them had
kneaded water and earth together into a slippery mass. As far as could
be seen in front and behind, the line of the pilgrimage stretched, women
and children plodding with burdens on their backs, men pushing
hand-carts before them, only here and there a waggon or a group of
horses.

Elvira took up several children on her horse, and pointed out to
Susannah a sickly woman to whom she could give a turn upon the pillion
that she herself had ridden during the night. So they began one of many
weary days.

To the good the necessities of compassion are as strong as are the
necessities of selfishness to the wicked. Within a day or two both
Susannah and Elvira had given up their horses entirely to women who had
been taken ill by the way. At first they plodded arm in arm, thinking
that merely to walk was all that their strength could endure; but there
were other women who had children to carry, women even who must push
hand-carts before them, and there were little children who sank one by
one exhausted on the winter road, as lambs fall when their mothers are
driven far.

After the march had continued for a few days there was much illness. All
clothing and beddi