In her hurry to accompany Bess to the lane, she had left her cabin door unfastened, never thinking of the danger of the open pit to her blind grandfather and the child. Little Nan had been wearying all morning for a run in the wintry sunshine, out of the close steam of washing in the small hut; but Martha had not dared to let her run about alone, as she had been used to do at Fern's Hollow, in their safe garden. After Martha and Black Bess had left her, the child stood looking wistfully through the open door for some time; but at last she ventured over the door-sill, and her tiny feet painfully climbed the frozen bank behind the house, whence she could see the group of girls in the lane below. Perhaps she would have found her way down to them, but Martha had been cross with her all the morning, and the child's little spirit was frightened with her scolding. She turned back to the cabin, sobbing, for the north wind blew coldly upon her; and then she must have caught sight of the shaft, where Stephen had been throwing stones down for her the night before, without a thought of the little one trying to pursue the dangerous game alone. As Martha came over the cinder-hill, her eyes fell upon little Nan, rosy, laughing, screaming with delight as her tiny hands lifted a large stone high above her curly head, while she bent over the unguarded margin of the pit. But before Martha could move in her agony of terror, the heavy stone dropped from her small fingers, and Nan, little Nan, with her rosy, laughing face, had fallen after it. Martha never forgot that moment. As if with a sudden awaking of memory, there flashed across her mind all the child's simple, winning ways. She seemed to see her dying mother again, laying the helpless baby in her arms, and bidding her to be a mother to it. She heard her father's last charge to take care of little Nan, when he also was passing away. Her own wicked carelessness and neglect, Stephen's terrible sorrow if little Nan should be dead, all the woeful consequences of her fault, were stamped upon her heart with a sudden and very bitter stroke. Those who were watching her from the lane saw her stand as if transfixed for a moment; and then a piercing scream, which made every one within hearing start with terror, rang through the frosty air, as Martha sprang forward to the mouth of the old pit, and, peering down its dark and narrow depths, could just discern a little white figure lying motionless at the bottom of the shaft. CHAPTER XIV. A BROTHER'S GRIEF.