dwell; sometimes he had an accidental meeting with Sheila,
such as this. So his years had passed; too smoothly to age him; too
barrenly to content or enrich him in any sense. No one appeared to see
his pathos, but pathos was there.

He fell into step with Sheila and they tramped onward together in the
cool, bright air, talking with the happy fluency which they always had
for each other. And though Sheila said nothing of her problem, her
restlessness, she felt all the while the comfort of her companion's
understanding sympathy--for anything that she might choose to tell him.

The road rose before them, a gradual, steady ascent; they reached its
crest just as the sun grew low and vivid. A glow was upon the autumn
fields on either hand; tranquility and silence seemed to be everywhere;
tranquility and silence except for a weird crooning that now floated to
them, a crooning indescribably mournful. And then they espied,
crouching down at the roadside and almost at their elbows, a creature
as weird and mournful as the sound.

"Crazy Lisbeth," whispered Sheila.

Lisbeth it was, Lisbeth grown old and more pitiful than ever; a ragged,
unkempt being--yet strangely lifted above the sordidness of her rags
and her beggar's life by her insanity. Long ago she had ceased to work
at all, her poor brain having become incapable of any continuous
effort, however simple. But she had resisted the obvious havens of
asylum and almshouse, and contrived to live on in liberty by aid of the
precarious charity of those who had once employed her. She made her
home in any deserted hovel that she could seize upon, going from one to
another in a sad progress of destitution. And whenever the days were
fine, she still roamed the countryside, a desire upon her that would
not let her rest, though her memory of her dead husband and child was
now so vague and blurred that she no longer consciously sought them.
To-day the desire that so tormented her was allayed. For she held
something in her arms, something that she rocked gently as she crooned.

Sheila went a step nearer, but Lisbeth did not look up or appear aware
of her presence. She was not aware of anything in the world but the
treasure within her arms. Watching, Sheila's eyes filled with quick
tears and her throat ached with a pity almost unbearable. For the
thing in Lisbeth's arms was a battered doll, and the crooning was a
lullaby.

Very softly Sheila turned to Peter. "Let us go ba