en her afore. But she crep' in and found me, and tole me there
was a watch kep' for me at Woodbridge. And she changed clothes with me,
so as to give me a bit of a chance. Mine was fair stiff with mud, for
I'd laid in a wet ditch till night, but they showed the blasted colour
for all that. And she give me all she had on her--her clothes, and a
bite of bread and bacon, and two pence. And it wasn't as if we was pals.
I'd never seen her afore. She stuck at nothing, and she only larfed at
the risk, for they'd have shut her up for certain if they'd caught her.
She said she'd manage some'ow. And she 'eartened me up, and put me on
the road for Wickham, and she said she'd dror away the pursoot by hiding
the prison clothes somewhere in the opsit direction where they could be
found easy by the first fool."

"She did it," I said.

"And how did she spare 'em? She'd nuthin' but them."

"I gave her some more. If she had been my own sister I could not have
done more for her."

"And she worn't caught, wor she?"

"Not that I know of. No, I feel sure she never was. I helped her to get
away."

"I was took in spite of all," said the woman, "and by my own silliness.
But I seed my little Nan alive fust, and that was all I wanted. And I
don't know who she was, nor what she was. She tole me she was a outcast
and a tramp and a good-for-nothing. But there's never been anybody yet,
be they who they may, as done for me what she done. She'd have give me
the skin orf her back if she could 'ave took it orf. And it worn't as if
I knowed her. I'd never set eyes on 'er afore, nor never shall again."

I have never seen her again, either.

THE HAND ON THE LATCH

There came a man across the moor,
Fell and foul of face was he,
He left the path by the cross-roads three,
And stood in the shadow of the door.

MARY COLERIDGE.

She stood at her low window with its uneven, wavering glass, and looked
out across the prairie. A little snow had fallen, not much, only enough
to add a sense of desolation to the boundless plain, the infinite plain
outside the four cramped walls of her log hut. The log hut was like a
tiny boat moored in some vast, tideless, impassable sea. The immensity
of the prairie had crushed her in the earlier years of her married life;
but gradually she had become accustomed to it, then reconciled to it, at
last almost a part of it. The grey had come early to her thick hair, a
certain fixity to the quie