fluttering burst. When David rose up to go,
he drew Nest to the door.

"You are not afraid, my child?" asked he.

"No," she replied. "She is often very
good and quiet. When she is not, I can bear
it."

"I shall see your face on earth no more;"
said he. "God bless you! " He went on
his way. Not many weeks after, David
Hughes was borne to his grave.

The doors of Nest's heart were opened—
opened wide by the love she grew to feel for
crazy Mary, so helpless, so friendless, so
dependent upon her. Mary loved her back
again, as a dumb animal loves its blind master.
It was happiness enough to be near her. In
general she was only too glad to do what she
was bidden by Nest. But there were times
when Mary was overpowered by the glooms
and fancies of her poor disordered brain.
Fearful times! No one knew how fearful.
On those days, Nest warned the little children
who loved to come and play around her, that
they must not visit the house. The signal
was a piece of white linen hung out of a side-
window. On those days the sorrowful and
sick waited in vain for the sound of Nest's
lame approach. But what she had to endure
was only known to God, for she never
complained. If she had given up the charge of
Mary, or if the neighbours had risen out of
love and care for her life, to compel such a
step, she knew what hard curses and blows—
what starvation and misery, would await the
poor creature.

She told of Mary's docility, and her affection,
and her innocent little sayings; but she
never told the details of the occasional days
of wild disorder, and driving insanity.

Nest grew old before her time, in
consequence of her accident. She knew that she
was as old at fifty as many are at seventy.
She knew it partly by the vividness with
which the remembrance of the days of her
youth came back to her mind, while the
events of yesterday were dim and forgotten.
She dreamt of her girlhood and youth. In
sleep she was once more the beautiful Nest
Gwynn, the admired of all beholders, the
light-hearted girl, beloved by her mother.
Little circumstances connected with those
early days, forgotten since the very time when
they occurred, came back to her mind, in her
waking hours. She had a scar on the palm
of her left hand, occasioned by the fall of a
branch of a tree, when she was a child;
it had not pained her since the first two days
after the accident; but now it began to hurt
her slightly; and clear in her ears was the
crackling sound of the treacherous, rending
wood; distinct before her rose the presence
of her mother tenderly binding up the wound.
With these remembrances came a longing
desire to see the beautiful fatal well, once
more before her death. She had never gone
so far since the day when, by her fall there,
she lost love, and hope, and her bright glad
youth. She yearned to look upon its waters
once again. This desire waxed as her life
waxed. She told it to poor crazy Mary.

"Mary! " said she, "I want to go to the
Rock Well. If you will help me, I can
manage it. There used to be many a stone in
the Dol Mawr on which I could sit and rest.
We will go to-morrow morning before folks
are astir."

Mary answered briskly, "Up, up! To the
Rock Well! Mary will go. Mary will go."
All day long she kept muttering to herself,
"Mary will go."

Nest had the happiest dream that night.
Her mother stood beside her—not in the flesh,
but in the bright glory of a blessed spirit.
And Nest was no longer young—neither was
she old—"they reckon not by days, nor years
where she was gone to dwell;" and her
mother stretched out her arms to her with a
calm glad look of welcome. She awoke; the
woodlark was singing in the near copse—the
little birds were astir, and rustling in their
leafy nests. Nest arose, and called Mary.
The two set out through the quiet lane. They
went along slowly and silently. With many
a pause they crossed the broad Dol Mawr;
and carefully descended the sloping stones, on
which no trace remained of the hundreds of
feet that had passed over them since Nest
was last there. The clear water sparkled and
quivered in the early sun-light, the shadows
of the birch-leaves were stirred on the ground;
the ferns—Nest could have believed that they
were the very same ferns which she had seen
thirty years before, hung wet and dripping
where the water over-flowed—a thrush
chanted matins from a holly bush near—and
the running stream made a low, soft, sweet
accompaniment. All was the same; Nature
was as fresh and young as ever. It might
have been yesterday that Edward Williams
had overtaken her, and told her his love—the
thought of his words—his handsome looks—
(he was a grey hard-featured man by this
time), and then she recalled the fatal wintry
morning when joy and youth had fled; and
as she remembered that faintness of pain, a
new, a real faintness—no echo of the memory
—came over her. She leant her back against a
rock, without a moan or sigh, and died! She
found immortality by the well side, instead of
her fragile perishing youth. She was so calm
and placid that Mary (who had been dipping
her fingers in the well, to see the waters drop
off in the gleaming sun-light), thought she
was asleep, and for some time continued her
amusement in silence. At last she turned,
and said,

"Mary is tired. Mary wants to go home."
Nest did not speak, though the idiot repeated
her plaintive words. She stood and looked
till a strange terror came over her—a terror
too mysterious to be borne.

"Mistress, wake! Mistress, wake! " she
said, wildly, shaking the form.

But Nest did not awake. And the first