As she looked aloft suddenly the vault was pervaded with a rosy illumination, like the flushing of a coming dawn, and through this haze of rosy light, infinitely remote, still flickered the tiny spark of the star. What was this? Merely some highly uplifted vapor that caught the sun after it had long ceased to shine on the landscape. There were even threads of amber traced in this remote and attenuated glory--and, lo--in that wondrous halo, the little star was eclipsed. Suddenly--with an unaccountable thrill of fear, Mehetabel bent over her babe--and uttered a cry that rang over the Mere. The hand she had laid on Thor's Stone to tap struck it not. She had nothing to ask; no wish to express. The one object for which she lived was gone from her. The babe was dead in her lap. Her hand fell from the stone. CHAPTER LII. THE ROSE-CLOUD. Joe Filmer, driving old Clutch, drew up at the door of the Ship Inn. Iver Verstage came out and welcomed him. "I've had a trouble with Clutch," said the ostler. "He lay down as we got out of Gorlmyn, and neither whip nor kicks 'ud make him stir. I tried ticklin', but t'wern't no good neither. How long this 'ud have gone on I dun know; I took him out o' th' shafts, and got him back to Gorlmyn, because some men helped me wi' him, and pulled at his tail, and twisted his carcass about till his nose pointed to the stable of the Angel. Then he condescended to get up and go to the inn. I shouldn't ha' got him away at all but that a notion came into my head as helped. I got the ostler to saddle and bride the gray mare, and mount her afore old Clutch's naked eyes. And I told the ostler to ride ahead a little way. Then, my word! what airs and jinks there were in Clutch; he gambolled and trotted like a colt. It was all a show-off afore the gray mare. The ostler--I knew him very well, he's called Tom Tansom, and it's a coorious thing now, he only cut his wise teeth about three months afore, and suffered won'erful in cutting 'em. But that's neither here nor there. Tom Tansom, he rode ahead, and old Clutch went after as if he were runnin' with the hounds. But I must tell you, whilst I was in Gorlmyn, that Widow Chivers came with the carrier, and as she was wantin' a lift, I just took her up and brought her on. She's been ter'ible bad, she tells me, with a cold, but she's better now--got some new kind o' lozenges, very greatly recommended. There's a paper given along wi' 'em with printed letters from all sorts o' people as has benefited by these lozenges. They're a shillin' and a ha'penny a box. Betty sez they've done her a power of good." "Go on with your account of old Clutch. You're almost as bad as he with your stoppages."