glamour of fairyland and foreign courts. Caroline
bowed gravely to the cat, and, seizing his feathery paws, danced,
bowing and posturing, in a bewitched abandon around the tinkling,
glistening fountain. The plumy tail of Red Rufus flew behind him as
he twirled, his little feet pattered furiously after Caroline's
twinkling sandals. Stooping over the fountain, she threw a silvery
handful high in the air and ran to catch it on her head.

As she stood at last, panting and dazed with her mad circling, she
was aware of the low murmur of a voice, rising and falling in a
steady measure, reaching out of the dim bulk of the great house,
dark and sunk in sleep before her. For a moment a chill fear struck
to the bottom of her little heart: was some weird spell aimed at
her, some malignant eye spying on her? She stood frozen to the spot,
the tiny drops of sweat cooling on her forehead, while the droning
sounded in her ears. Then, out of the very core of her terror, some
inexplicable impulse urged her on to face it, and she crept, step by
step, the cat tight in her nervous grasp, around the corner of the
great house, toward the sound.

This corner was a wing, set at right angles to the main building,
and as she rounded it she found herself at the edge of an inner
court. In the opposite wing, looking straight across the court, was
a lighted room with a long French window opening directly on the
shaven turf, and in the center of this window there sat in a high,
carved chair a very old woman. She was carefully dressed in deep
black, with pure white ruffles at her neck and around her shrunken
wrists, and a lace cap on her thin, white hair. Her feet were on a
carved foot-stool, and a quaint silver lamp, set on a slender table
at her side, threw a stream of light across the court. Her face,
lined with countless wrinkles, was bent upon a large book in her
lap; from its pages she read in a low, steady voice--the
passionless, almost terrifying voice of great and weary age:

"_Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all
generations._

"_Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou
hast formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting
to everlasting thou art God._"

Caroline stared, fascinated, down the path of lamplight. It marked a
bed of yellow tulips with a broad band; they stood motionless, as if
carved in ivory.

[Illustration: Across the court was a lighted room with a long
French window, and