“It was not many minutes before I was relieved, and free to follow the woman, which I did, though she had lost herself among the shadows. I then turned toward the river, and followed the young creature at a cautious distance, until she left the paved street and went into the enclosure of a private mansion, where shrubbery was thick and the grass so elastic that I could approach close to her unnoticed. “She had heard the heavy rush of flowing waters coming up through the solemn night, and quickened her steps as if the voice of a friend had called to her from a great distance. “‘Oh, it is there! it is there!’ she moaned, ‘my last—last friend—the only one that will take me in and hide me.’ “Now her footsteps beat swiftly on the turf as she sped onward, guided by the deep whispering of the waves. She was skirting the walls of a garden, over which roses and clustering masses of honeysuckles trailed out of bounds, filling the night air with fragrance, that for one moment evidently checked the girl in her progress; or she was stricken faint with a sudden recoil of conscience, perhaps. ‘They are blossoming now—now around my window, as they did then, just a year—only a year!’ I heard her say. “The girl wrung her hands, looking wildly around, as if she sought for some human being to pity her; but nothing was near save the faint odor of flowers, that seemed to wither her like poison; and the far off drifts of the river, blended with the flow of a soft wind through innumerable leaves, and the stir of roses under their dew. “The very fragrance and beauty of the night, while it seemed to lift her soul out of its dull apathy, stung it to desperation. She turned and fled from the garden wall, and I lost her among the great primeval trees, that made the place solitary as a hermitage. Without giving it a thought, I plunged into the shadows of the grove, beyond which the great river was flowing. “I heard sounds of her progress through the undergrowth, and followed with cautious swiftness; for her dress, her air, and the child that she carried under that shawl, suggested a tragedy, which it was my duty to prevent. The street she had been threading, that immense flower-garden, and the grand old mansion, which seemed as if buried in the heart of a wilderness, the shrubbery was so old and thick around it, were now left behind. I could hardly see my way in the dense thickness of those trees which grew close to the river, flinging their shadows over it, in places, and making the spot so lonely that I felt a thrill of dread, as the contrast between its isolation and the street I had left, broke upon me.