"Mark, listen! Other souls are in pain. It is not the wind that I hear--not the dashing rain. I have heard sobs, and moans, and crying in the night--a child crying--like a little baby soul that has lost its way and can find neither earth nor heaven." "Your fancies make me mad," cried Mark, angrily. "My troubles are real, and so will yours be to-morrow----" Shrill and clear the cry quivered on the air. He, too, heard it. "It is little Mattie," he cried. "Run to her." And he followed Patty, fleet-footed, up the stairs. But little rosy Mattie slept tranquilly, and the two came slowly down. Patty opened the kitchen window, and the swirling rain drenched her dark hair as she leaned into the darkness. "Come in; there will be nights enough to face storms," said Mark, hardly. "We are only both fanciful; or, as my old grannie used to tell me, since we are flitting from the hearth where we have kept warm so long, the souls of my ancestors are mourning for my sorrow. Poor old grannie! little she knew how I should leave the old roof-tree." Patty sprung to her feet. "Mark, come with me! It is no fancy--no spirit. It is real; some human being out in this tempest. Let us search everywhere, and give the homeless a shelter this last night that we have a home." She ran from the room, and Mark followed her into the stone-flagged entry. Her vehemence carried him away. He reached over her shoulder, and aided her trembling hands to undo the door-bolt. Starless the night; no balm on the summer air; the raw chill of autumn brooding under the beating rain; a murky heaven over land and sea; and once again that wild, only half-human wail, coming up now from their very feet! Patty sprung into the dark, vine-draped porch; the red light from the kitchen crept fitfully to the threshold, and close beside the door-sill, lay a bundle in the poor shelter of the latticed porch. From that bundle came, shrill and piteous, that miserable cry. CHAPTER II. A FAIRY CHANGELING. "Mark! Mark! it is a child, a poor forsaken baby," said Patty, stooping down and gathering into her womanly arms the weeping waif-fragment of the seething sea of humanity so strangely drifted to her door. "A child! Dear Heaven! such a very little child!" She hurried into the kitchen and laid the bundle on the table in the circle of lamplight, and with careful, eager fingers, began to loosen the wrappings. "A child!" said Mark, amazed and dull--"a child!" Then with sudden anger he cried out: "A child, to the homeless! A child to us, who will not be able to care for our own--a child for forced exiles! Why did they not carry it to the poor-house? There, at least, it might have stayed!" "Hush, dear!" said Patty. "God only asks of us duty for to-day. To-night we have a home, and can take the stranger in. God will take care of it to-morrow." "Not that I grudge the poor little wretch," said Mark, looking over his wife's shoulder.