wand of kindly fortune had opened
before her dazzled eyes a mine of golden possibilities. At last she
would have a chance to breathe and live. She arranged the common, heavy
ware on the shelves with a strange sense of freedom. She would be done
with dish-washing soon. She even found it in her heart to pity her
step-mother, who was giving vent to her suppressed wrath in mighty
strokes of her pudding-stick through a large bowl of buckwheat batter.
She was not going to Boston.

When the chores were done, she caught up the fretful Polly and carried
her upstairs, saying the magic name over softly to herself. She even
found it easy to be patient with Lemuel as he put her through her
nightly torture before he fell into the arms of Morpheus. She did not
mind much if Polly was wakeful--she knew she should never close her eyes
all night. The soft spring air floated in through the open window, and
she heard the birds twitter and the frogs peep: she heard Abraham
Lincoln, the old horse that she used to ride to water before she grew
big enough to work, whinney over his hay; and Goliath, the young giant
that had come to take his place in the farm work, answer him sonorously:
the dog barked lazily as a nighthawk swept by, and in the distant
hen-yard she heard a rooster crow. Her pity grew, until it rested like a
benison upon all her humble friends, for they must remain in Sleepy
Hollow, and she was going away.

_Chapter II_

A TEN-DOLLAR BILL

'I suppose you'll be wanting some finery, little girl,' said Mr Harding
the next morning as he pushed away his chair from the breakfast table.
'Dress is the first consideration, isn't it, with women?'

'I don't know about the finery, father,' and Pauline laughed a little.
'I expect I shall be satisfied with the essentials.'

Mr Harding crossed the room to an old-fashioned secretary which stood in
one corner. Coming back, he held out to her a ten-dollar bill. 'Will
this answer? Money is terrible tight just now, and the mortgage falls
due next week. It's hard work keeping the wolf away these dull times.'

Pauline forced her lips to form a 'Thank you,' as she put the bank-note
in her pocket, and then began silently to clear the table, her thoughts
in a tumultuous whirl. Ten dollars! Her father's hired man received a
dollar a day. She had been working hard for years, and had received
nothing but the barest necessaries in the way of clothing, purchased
under Mrs Harding's economical e