“Is it true that if I were to die, and go away into the darkness and silence of the grave, and then after a year could come back to the friends who had wept so bitterly when I left them, is it true that I should find myself in the way—my place filled, or bridged over with new loves and interests, which my sudden return would disturb and mar?” And then I thought of a little blue-eyed, golden-haired girl, whom we called Nellie, and whose grave had been on the hill-side more than a dozen years. If she could come back again, would she not find a warm welcome from the mother who never mentions her without the hot tears springing to her eyes! Would Nellie be in the way? Oh, no, not the _little_ Nellie who died that winter day so many years ago, the child Nellie, whose chair is in the corner yet, and whose picture looks down upon us from the wall. _She_ could never be in the way, though the _woman_, the Nellie of twenty years, might be strange at first to the mother twelve years older now, with fuller and larger experiences of life, and habits of making plans with Nellie left out of them; but there could be no real jarring of new loves and interests; there could only be a deep joy and thankfulness for the Nellie alive again. So I reasoned—so I decided, and then turned back to the birds, who were still at their talk, and had passed from the snow-storm of April to the month of May, when Mrs. Red’s cage was first hung in a mountain ash which grew in the garden of her new home. CHAPTER V. BLACK-EYES AND BRIGHT-HAIR. “The day was so bright,” she said, “and the grass so green, and the yard so beautiful, that for a time I could only look around me and admire the many pretty things scattered about the grounds. And as I looked it seemed to me I must have been there before, everything was so familiar, even to the iron deer with Southern moss upon his horns. Had I dreamed of all this, or what was it? I asked, and my head was beginning to ache with trying to recall something in the past, when suddenly a voice, which I remembered perfectly, called out: “‘Halloo, Miss Red, if this don’t beat all. Here you are away up here on my own ground. How did it happen? And what do you think of the North now?’