leaning and eagerly ran up to Harriet.

The noise of the opening door roused the girl. She sat up, stared in a
dazed way at her mother an instant, then threw off the coverings and
sprang out of bed.

"I've been asleep; Mr. Westerfelt! Oh, mother, why did you let me--"

"He's all right!" interrupted Mrs. Floyd. "They didn't touch a hair of
his head." Harriet stared open-mouthed.

"He's back safe and sound," went on Mrs. Floyd; "he proved himself
innocent and they let 'im go."

"Oh, mother, mother!" Harriet put her arms round the old woman's neck
and clung to her. "Thank God! Oh, mother, thank God--thank God!"
Then she sat down in a chair and began hastily to put on her shoes.

"What are you going to do?"

"Going to see him."

"Not now; why--"

"I _will_ see him. Let me alone; don't try to stop me!"

"You surely would not go to the stable! He--"

"I'd go anywhere to see him. I don't care what people say; I'm going
to see him."

As Harriet bent to fasten her shoes, Mrs. Floyd touched her.

"Daughter, are you engaged to Mr. Westerfelt?"

Harriet did not look up. She still bent over her shoes, but the
strings lay motionless in her fingers.

"No, he intimated he couldn't marry me, on--on account of my
misfortune. Oh, don't let's talk about it. He and I understand each
other. He loves me, but we're not engaged."

Mrs. Floyd leaned against the mantel-piece. Her face had become hard
and stern. Harriet started to leave the room, but Mrs. Floyd suddenly
stepped between her and the door.

"He intimated that _that_ would keep him from marrying you? My
Lord--the coward!"

"Mother, don't--don't say that!"

"I thought he was a _man_! Why, he is lower than a brute."

Harriet disengaged herself from her mother's grasp, and passed on to
the door. She turned on the threshold.

"I have no time to quarrel with you about him," she said, with a sigh;
"you can have your opinion, nothing on earth will change mine. He
loves me. I am going to see him now, and nothing you can say or do
will prevent me."

Her shoes rattled loosely on the bare floor and on the stairs as she
went down to the street.

During the night the sycamore-trees had strewn the ground with
half-green, half-yellow leaves, and the tops of the fences were white
with frost. Martin Worthy was taking down the shutters at the store
and calling through the window to his wife, who was unscrewing them on
the inside. A farmer had left hi