As the gay procession moved away crying, "Good-night, good-night!" Hetty stood on the porch and watched them. She was on the point of calling them back. A strange dread of being left alone seized upon her. Never since she had forsaken her home had she felt such a sense of loneliness, except when she was crouched under the hemlock-trees by the lake. She watched till she could no longer see even a fluttering motion in the distance. Then she went into the house. The silence smote her. She turned and went out again, and went to the paddock, where the little lamb was bleating. "Poor little creature!" she said, "wert thou torn from thy mother? Dost thou pine for one thou see'st not?" She untied it, led it into the house, and spread down hay and blankets for it, in one corner of her kitchen. The little creature seemed cheered by the light and warmth; cuddled down and went to sleep. Hetty's heart was full of thoughts. "Oh! what would Eben have said if he could have seen me to-night?" "How Raby would have delighted in it all!" "How long am I to live this strange life?" "Can this be really I?" "What has become of my old life, of my old self?" Like restless waves driven by a wind too powerful to be resisted, thoughts and emotions surged through Hetty's breast. She buried her face in her hands and wept; wept the first unrestrained tears she had wept. Only for a few moments, however. Like the old Hetty Gunn of the old life, she presently sprang to her feet, and said to herself, "Oh, what a selfish soul I am to be spending all my strength this way! I shan't be fit for any thing to-morrow if I go on so." Then she patted the lamb on its head, and said with a comforting sense of comradeship in the little creature's presence, "Good-night, little motherless one! Sleep warm," and then she went to bed and slept till morning. I have dwelt on the surface details of Hetty's life at St. Mary's, and have said little about her mental condition and experiences: this is because I have endeavored to present this part of her life, exactly as she lived it, and as she would tell it herself. That there were many hours of acute suffering; many moments when her courage wellnigh failed; when she was almost ready to go back to her home, fling herself at her husband's feet, and cry, "Let me be but as a servant in thy house,"--it is not needful to say.