wrong! I should never have come this way!" she moaned, and knew that she was lost, lost and alone. When she dared look through the window again the water was gone, and she felt the motion of the car to be slower. Soon it had stopped. Trembling, she rose from her corner and walked unsteadily to the door. [Pg 51]"Will you kindly tell me where we are? I have made a mistake," she said to the man who had refused to take her money. [Pg 51] He looked at her and spoke to his companion. "I suppose we're booked for the usual half-hour wait, Jim," he said; "I don't see any green light." She cried aloud and rushed out of it. "I think I am mad!" she wept. "I wish I had died with my head on that crimson cushion! What will happen to me? That cruel doctor will have killed me!" "What is it, madam? Can I help you?" A soft voice spoke close to her and she grasped the arm of a slender, girlish creature who turned two brown, startled eyes up at her. Now it was for joy that she wept, and clung to the girl, whom her confused brain took to be the brown-eyed housemaid who had spoken to her last. [Pg 52]"Indeed, indeed, you can help me!" she cried. "I am lost—I have come into the country, it seems, a long way, in a terrible street-car where no one would speak to me, and I ought to be in the city, in my home, for I am afraid I am very ill: I seem to be in a sort of fever. Do you know where we are? I have never been here. When will it be day?" [Pg 52] "Very soon, madam," said the little maid, supporting her firmly for all her slenderness, "and I know well where we are. Come home with me; Karen and I plan to be at the Farm by daybreak." She looked, and there beside them stood a tiny donkey, saddled with a sort of leather chair, and almost at the level of his rough, thin shoulder stood a great sleek-coated hound. "Let me help you into the saddle, madam," the little maid went on, "and you will find how well you sit there. I am very strong, and I can walk beside." As in a dream she let the girl half lift[Pg 53] her into the seat, and the donkey walked easily along, the hound stepping nobly by
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