At a certain point on the road, her steady resolution seemed to falter; she hesitated—walked more slowly—and finally stopped altogether; as though working out something in her mind, she made little circles in the dust with one foot, while she stood, looking frowningly at the ground, and biting her red lips. At last the difficulty—whatever it was—seemed to have solved itself; she turned from the road, and struck off by a side path in the direction of the house known as The Cottage. What instinct had guided her there, it would be impossible to say; but the object of her search, early as the hour was, was in the garden—sitting on a rustic seat, out of the view of the windows of the house, and with her face hidden on her hands. Hearing the light sweep of the girl’s dress on the grass, she rose hurriedly and disclosed the figure of Madge Barnshaw. For a moment, the two faced each other in silence—the one, vexed and ashamed at being discovered in such an attitude; the other, with something of defiance about her, mixed with a desperate and growing anxiety. In some indefinable fashion, each seemed to know the subject of the other’s thoughts, and to be jealous of those thoughts, each in a different way. But the one woman would have died sooner than acknowledge any emotion or sorrow to the other; the other was proud of her emotion—openly flaunted it, as it were; and would have been glad to think that one man’s name was branded upon her forehead almost, that all might read her secret. “Is anything the matter?” asked Madge, rising to her feet, and confronting the other. “Dear Heaven!” cried Clara, in a sort of harsh whisper—“can you stand there, and look at me and ask that? Can you know that a man is as good as dying—dying by inches, with every moment that we live—and ask me that?” “I—I don’t understand,” said Madge, in a low voice. “More than all, I cannot see why you are troubling yourself about——” Clara Siggs had turned away impatiently; she flung round now, and came at the other woman with her hands held clenched close to her sides, and her teeth close clenched also. “You don’t understand! You cannot see why I should be troubling about him! I am an inn-keeper’s daughter—only a common girl, at the least; you are a great lady. They say you were to marry him; will you cast him away now, when he lies in prison, in shame and misery—and with Death drawing nearer every day? Is your love for him so great, that it is something to be changed by what men say of him?” Some curious shame—some strange stirring of admiration for this wild untutored child—crept over Madge Barnshaw. She saw, in this girl, something stronger and more purposeful than herself—the wild and desperate courage which might over-ride all obstacles—which might snap fingers at Death itself, for the sake of one man’s life. She went nearer to the girl, and held out her hands to her. “Tell me—help me!” she whispered—“show me what I should do!”