The next day a restlessness like that of fever worked in her blood, and she ran from turret to basement of the roomy old house, calling Will to come and help her find amusement. "Play ball with me, Will," she said; "I feel as if I were a child to-day." " Oh, it's no fun playing with a girl," replied the boy; "besides, I am going fishing in the river with Zebbadee Blake; I shan't be back till supper," and shouldering his fishing-rod he flung off with his can of worms. Miss Saidie was skimming big pans of milk in the spring-house, and Maria watched her idly for a time, growing suddenly impatient of the leisurely way in which the spoon travelled under the yellow cream. "I don't see how you can be so fond of it," she said at last. "Lord, child, I never could abide dairy work," responded Miss Saidie, setting the skimmed pan aside and carefully lifting another from the flat stones over which a stream of water trickled. "And yet you've done nothing else all your long life," wondered Maria. "When it comes to doing a thing in this world," returned the little woman, removing a speck of dust from the cream with the point of the spoon, "I don't ask myself whether I like it or not, but what's the best way to get it done. I've spent sixty years doing things I wasn't fond of, and I don't reckon I'm any the less happy for having done 'em well." "But I should be," asserted Maria, and then, with her white parasol over her bared head, she started for a restless stroll along the old road under the great chestnuts. She had reached the abandoned ice-pond, and was picking her way carefully in the shadow of the trees, when the baying of a pack of hounds in full cry broke on her ears, and with the nervous tremor she had associated from childhood with the sound, she stopped short in the road and waited anxiously for the hunt to pass. Even as she hesitated, feeling in imagination all the blind terror of the pursuit, and determined to swing into a chestnut bough in case of an approach, a small animal darted suddenly from around the bend in the sunken road, and an instant afterward the hounds in hot chase broke from the cover. For a single breath the girl, dropping her parasol, looked at the lowered branch; then as the small animal neared her her glance fell, and she saw that it was a little yellow dog, with hanging red tongue and eyes bulging in terror. From side to side of the red clay road the creature doubled for a moment in its anguish, and then with a spring, straight as the flight of a homing bird, fled to the shelter of Maria's skirts. Quick as a heart-beat the girl's personal fears had vanished, and as an almost savage instinct of battle awoke in her, she stooped with a protecting movement and, picking the small dog from the ground, held him high above her head as the hounds came on. A moment before her limbs had shaken at the distant cries; now facing the immediate presence of the danger, she felt the rage of her pity flow like an infusion of strong