One day in this Autumn there came, however, as I have said, a change and interruption to these thoughts. It was October, and though there is no finer month sometimes in our changeable English climate, October can be chill enough when it pleases, as all the world knows. It was not a time of the year favorable, at least when the season was wet, to the country about Whiteladies. To be sure, the wealth of trees took on lovely tints of Autumn colors when you could see them; but when it rained day after day, as it did that season, every wood and byway was choked up with fallen leaves; the gardens were all strewn with them; the heaviness of decaying vegetation was in the air; and everything looked dismal, ragged, and worn out. The very world seemed going to pieces, rending off its garments piecemeal, and letting them rot at its melancholy feet. The rain poured down out of the heavy skies as if it would never end. The night fell soon on the ashamed and pallid day. The gardener at Whiteladies swept his lawn all day long, but never got clear of those rags and scraps of foliage which every wind loosened. Berks was like a dissipated old-young man, worn out before his time. On one of those dismal evenings, Augustine was coming from the Evening Service at the almshouses in the dark, just before nightfall. With her gray hood over her head, and her hands folded into her great gray sleeves, she looked like a ghost gliding through the perturbed and ragged world; but she was a comfortable ghost, her peculiar dress suiting the season. As she came along the road, for the byway through the fields was impassable, she saw before her another shrouded figure, not gray as she was, but black, wrapped in a great hooded cloak, and stumbling forward against the rain and wind. I will not undertake to say that Augustine’s visionary eyes noticed her closely; but any unfamiliar figure makes itself remarked on a country road, where generally every figure is most familiar. This woman was unusually tall, and she was evidently a stranger. She carried a child in her arms, and stopped at every house and at every turning to look eagerly about her, as if looking for something or some one, in a strange place. She went along more and more slowly, till Augustine, walking on in her uninterrupted, steady way, turning neither to the right nor to the left hand, came up to her. The stranger had seen her coming, and, I suppose, Augustine’s dress had awakened hopes of succor in her mind, bearing some resemblance to the religious garb which was well known to her. At length, when the leafy road which led to the side door of Whiteladies struck off from the highway, bewildering her utterly, she stood still at the corner and waited for the approach of the other wayfarer, the only one visible in all this silent, rural place. “Ma sœur!” she said softly, to attract her attention. Then touching Augustine’s long gray sleeve, stammered in English, “I lost my way. Ma sœur, aidez-moi pour l’amour de Dieu!”