whisper, to the river; passing it always, yet never
getting by; tracking, step by step, the great stream backward toward its
small beginnings.

"See, there are real blue peaks!" cried Leslie joyously, pointing away
to the north and east where the outlines lay faint and lovely in the far
distance.

"Oh, I wish I could see! I'm losing it all!" said Elinor, plaintively
and blindfold.

"Why don't you try the eyestone?" said Jeannie.

But Elinor shrunk, even yet, from deliberately putting that great thing
in her eye, agonized already by the presence of a mote.

There came a touch on her shoulder, as before. The good woman of the
gray bonnet had come forward from her seat farther down the car.

"I'm going to stop presently," she said, "at East Haverhill; and I
_should_ feel more satisfied in my mind if you'd just let me see you
easy before I go. Besides, if you don't do something quick, the cinder
will get so bedded in, and make such an inflammation, that a dozen
eyestones wouldn't draw it out."

At this terror, poor Elinor yielded, in a negative sort of way. She
ceased to make resistance when her unknown friend, taking the little
twist of paper from the hand still fast closed over it with the
half-conscious grasp of pain, dexterously unrolled it, and produced the
wonderful chalky morsel.

"Now, 'let's see, says the blind man;'" and she drew down hand and
handkerchief with determined yet gentle touch. "Wet it in your own
mouth,"--and the eyestone was between Elinor's lips before she could
refuse or be aware. Then one thumb and finger was held to take it again,
while the other made a sudden pinch at the lower eyelid, and, drawing it
at the outer corner before it could so much as quiver away again, the
little white stone was slid safely under.

"Now 'wink as much as you please,' as the man said that took an
awful-looking daguerreotype of me once. Good-by. Here's where I get out.
And there they all are to meet me." And then, the cars stopping, she
made her way, with her carpet-bag and parasol and a great newspaper
bundle, gathered up hurriedly from goodness knows where, along the
passage, and out upon the platform.

"Why, it's the strangest thing! I don't feel it in the least! Do you
suppose it ever _will_ come out again, Augusta?" cried Elinor, in a tone
greatly altered from any in which she had spoken for two hours.

"Of course it will," cried "Gray-bonnet" from beneath the window. "Don't
be under the least mite