With a shriek she awoke, and sprang up, shivering and trembling with cold and fright--all the terrors of the night suddenly come upon her. She looked round; all was as it had been when she went to sleep; the lonely road, the dark fields, the trees and hedges; but a breeze had sprung up before the dawn, and was rustling the leaves and branches; overhead a star or two was shining in dark rifts, and in the east a melancholy waning moon was slowly rising, half obscured by scattered clouds. With a sudden impulse, born of an urgent sense of utter loneliness and helplessness, the child fell on her knees and repeated an Ave Maria; the clouds drifted away, and the low moon shone out between the trees with a pale glow, that to our convent-taught Madelon seemed suddenly to irradiate and transfigure the night with a glory not of earth. Never in after years did she, in church or picture-gallery, come across glorified Madonna, or saint floating in ethereal spaces, without the memory returning to her of a silent road, dark, rustling trees, a midnight sky swept with clouds; and then a vision, as it were, of light and hope, giving new strength and courage to one little terrified heart. Madelon started on her journey with renewed energy, but she hardly knew how she got through the miles that remained. The moon rose higher and higher, the road bordered with poplar- trees seemed to stretch before and behind into a never-ending length, as in some wearying nightmare. Madelon, in her straight, old-fashioned silk frock, her bundle on her arm, marching steadily on, looked nothing but a queer little black speck, casting a long narrow shadow, as she passed from one moon-lit space to another. Ever afterwards, when she looked back upon that night, the whole seemed like some perplexed, struggling dream, of which the waking reality appeared less vivid than the visions that had haunted her sleep. Perhaps she would have broken down altogether but for the friendly hints of the coming day that presently began to show themselves. There came a moment when the night grew more silent, and the breeze more chilly, and the surrounding world more dim and fantastic in the uncertain moonlight; and then the shadows began to waver and grow confused, long streaks of light showed themselves in the east, the moon grew fainter in the brightening sky, the birds began to chirp and twitter in every tree and bush. The night had vanished, and the horizon was all aglow with the ruddy light of a new day, when Madelon turned the last bend of the road, and saw before her the white cottages, the big hotel, the stream and hills of Chaudfontaine. CHAPTER XI. The Countess G----.