If any one had spoken to her or touched her, I believe the poor distracted creature would have gone mad or fallen into dead unconsciousness; for nature was strained in her almost to the furthest limit; but no one saw or interfered, or knew what was being done. She never looked at the boy again, but held him fast and hurried on. He was a child of seven years old, but small and light; in her vigorous arms--she was as strong as a man, as light and rapid as a savage--he was as a feather’s weight. She went away with him unnoticed, wrapping her poor shawl round him to keep him from the rain, through the muddy roads, in the storm and dusky twilight. Merran Miller, the smith’s wife, shutting her door in the darkening, when the rain began to blow in, saw the dark figure pass, and said to herself that Jean Macfarlane had sent the beggar-wife away; and oh! what a night it was to travel in, even for the like of her! “But what’s come o’ the bairns?” she asked herself; then shut the door, and went in, and stirred her fire, and put on her kettle. The beggar-wife and her bairns were no concern of hers. “The beggar-wife” went swiftly up by dark Eskside beneath the trees, that waved overhead like spirits in pain. She was blinded with the rain, not with tears, for her eyes were dry and refused to shed more. Her limbs trembled under her, but her wild heart and purpose did not fail. After a time she came back again alone, without her burden. The dark branches still tossed against the pale sky, and kept on their passionate struggle against the elements; but the forlorn human creature who tottered along underneath, swift but unsteady, beaten about by the wind, drenched by the rain, too miserable to feel either, had lost all sense of struggle. The lassitude of soul which comes after a great act accomplished was in her. She went like a ghost across the bridge, where no one now was visible, so much had the storm increased, and up the further end of the village street. Jean Macfarlane was sitting with her guests in the little room down-stairs, drinking with them, and filling the air with her loud excited voice and torrent of words. There was no one in the passage or stair to note the dark figure gliding back to the room which no one had cared to notice since she entered it. It was dark, but she required no light. The other child, he who remained, her only one, lay still as she had left him. She put down her face upon his warm flushed cheek; she lifted him tenderly on her lap, and put on his little boot, and soothed him when he woke and cried in the dark, and clung to her. “Mother’s here!--mother’s here!” she murmured, crooning to him, poor wretched hopeless soul! with the voice of a dove in her nest. Then she took him too in her arms, and going down-stairs stopped the dirty maid who was Jean Macfarlane’s whole staff of service, and paid for the poor refreshment she had had. “You’re no going on sic a night?” said the