"I must go! I cant't stay here! Or I shall lose--Oh, what shall I lose?" she groaned in her drowsiness and dread. Something would happen if she did not get up at once--she would lose something that she _mustn't_ lose. She must get up now, at once. "I shall lose Blossom--no, I mean Blossom will lose--oh, yes, Blossom will lose her legs, if I don't get up," she drowsed, and fell asleep. Chapter IV. Judith awoke with a bewildering sensation of guilt and need of action. What had happened? What had she done that she ought not to have done?--or was it something that she ought to? Memory struggled back to her dimly, then flashed upon her in sudden clearness. She had taken a school of mackerel--that was what she had done that was praiseworthy. She had left them down there in the old black dory, undressed and unpacked--that was the thing she ought not to have done. That was the awful thing! For if they were not dressed and packed at once-- "Oh, I shall lose them! I shall lose them!" moaned poor Judith, sitting up in bed and wringing her hands in the keenness of her distress. "How could I have _let_ myself fall asleep! How could I have slept all this time like a log!" It was very dark, so it must be midnight or later. There was no light anywhere, on land or sea, or in Judith's troubled soul. To her remorseful mind all her terrible labor and strain of body had been in vain; she had gone to sleep and spoiled everything, everything! Judith had never been so utterly tired out as when she went to sleep; she had never been so tired as she was now. She felt lame in every joint and muscle of her body. But her conscience stood up before her in the dark and arraigned her with pitiless, scathing scorn. "Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself? See what you've done! All those beautiful fish lost, when you might have saved them--just by staying awake and attending to them. A little thing like that! And you worked so hard to get them--I was proud of you for that. Ah-h, but I'm ashamed of you now!" "Don't! don't--you hurt!" sighed Judith, "I'll get up now, this minute, and go down there. Don't you see me getting up? I've got one shoe on now." Judith was not experienced in the dressing of many fish at a time and the packing of them in barrels for market. At sixteen, how can one be--and one a girl? But she knew in a rather indefinite way the importance of having it done promptly. She remembered father's and the boys' last school of fish--how she had hurried down to the shore and watched the dory come creeping heavily in, how the boys had cheered, as they came, how father had let her help at the dressing, and mother had brought down hot coffee for them all and then "fallen to," herself and worked like a man. How they all had worked to get the barrels packed full of the shining layers in time for the steamer next morning!