They were gone several hours and on their return, while still some miles from home were overtaken by a heavy shower, from which they took refuge in a small log-house standing a few yards back from the road.

It was a rude structure built in a wild spot among the rocks and trees, and evidently the abode of pinching poverty; but everything was clean and neat, and the occupants, an elderly woman reclining in a high-backed wooden rocking-chair with her feet propped up on a rude bench, and a young girl who sat sewing by a window overlooking the road, wore an air of refinement, and spoke English more correctly and with a purer accent than sometimes is heard in the abodes of wealth and fashion.

The door stood wide open and the moment Philip drew rein, the girl at the window called to them to come in out of the wet, and directed the lad to shelter his horse and phaeton underneath a shed at the side of the house.

Gertrude ran lightly in with a laugh and jest, Elsie following close at her heels.

The girl rose and setting out two unpainted wooden chairs, invited them to be seated, remarking as she resumed her work, that the shower had come up very suddenly, but she hoped they were not wet.

"Not enough to hurt us," said Gertrude.

"Hardly at all, thank you," I said Elsie. "I hope our mammas will not be alarmed about us, Gerty."

"I don't think they need be so long as there's no thunder and lightning," answered Gertrude. "Ah, see how it is pouring over yonder on the mountain, Elsie!"

The pale face of the woman in the rocking-chair, evidently an invalid, had grown still paler and her features worked with emotion.

"Child! child!" she cried, fixing her wild eyes on Elsie, "who—who are you?"

"They're the young ladies from the Crags, mother," said the girl soothingly.

"I know that, Sally," she answered peevishly, "but one's a visitor, and the other one called her Elsie, she's just the age and very image of—child, what is your family name?"

"Travilla, madam," the little girl replied, with a look of surprise.

"Oh, you're her daughter; yes, of course I might have known it. And so she married him, her father's friend and so many years older."

The words were spoken as if to herself and she 

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