only with
her own sick fancy; she was astonished that a few swift moments had
involved her in an increasing sense of personal contact, and she became
awed by the strength of the encounter.

"My husband prayed for my safety," she repeated with softened attitude;
then, as if seeking for the protection which had died with him, she
repeated again and again, "Remember his prayers."

She left the challenge at last apparently to die where she had breathed
it in the dark cold air of her lonely room. The tension of her mind
relaxed.

She sat down again, not knowing whether anything had occurred, but a
crisis in the morbid working of her strained nerves had in some way
relieved her.

She was curiously unable to go back to her former agonised anxieties.
Natural fatigue, even sleepiness, came over her, but not her fears,
even though she wooed them.

"Ah, well," she said within herself, "it is quite true that it is
useless to consider when I can give myself no help."

The habits of the Saints were early. When she heard silence fall upon
the great house she went into her sleeping-room and lay down upon the
bed. Sleep came quickly.

With the early dawn she opened her eyes. In the first moments of
half-awaked consciousness she was aware that one thought lay alone in
the empty horizon of her mind, like a trace left by a dream that had
passed, as a wisp of cloud may be left in an empty sky.

This thought was that she would at once go down to the river bank upon
the southwest of the town.

When other thoughts awoke and crowded within her ken this thought
appeared foolish, and still more so the strong influence it had left
upon her will, for in the momentum of this influence she had risen
without debating the point.

She was not aware that she had moved in her sleep or dreamed. She was
greatly refreshed and again unreasonably light-hearted. She opened her
shutters and saw that the dawn was calm and fair. As yet the sleeping
town had scarcely stirred.

"It is better to go out than to stay in," she said to herself as she
remembered that this hour would be her one chance of taking air and
exercise unobserved. She heard the main door of the house open and,
looking over the banister, saw a slattern with bucket and mop passing
into some back passage. She went lightly down and out into the fresh
frosty air.

What had that dream been concerning the river bank on the south-western
side? She could not recall it, nor had she ever ex