sobbing one night last year in the chase and it mid ha gone hard wi a certain party if folks had come along well a little more or a little less twas a thousand that it should have happened to she of all others but tis always the the plain ones be as safe as � hey the speaker turned to one of the group who certainly was not ill defined as plain it was a thousand indeed it was impossible for even an enemy to feel otherwise on looking at as she sat there with her flower uke mouth and large tender eyes neither black nor blue nor gray nor violet rather all those shades together and a hundred others which could be seen if one looked into their � shade behind shade � tint beyond tint � around pupils that had no bottom an almost standard woman but for the slight of character inherited from her race a resolution which had surprised herself had brought her into the fields this wc for the first time many months after wearing and wasting her heart with every engine of regret that lonely could devise common sense had her she felt that she would do well to be useful again � to taste anew sweet independence at by maiden no more any price the past was past whatever it had been it was no more at hand whatever its consequences time would dose over them they would all in a few years be as if they had never been and she herself down and forgotten meanwhile the trees were just as green as before the birds sang and the sun one s clearly now as ever the familiar had not darkened because of her grief nor because of her pain she might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly � the thought of the world s concern at her situation � was on an she was not an existence an experience a passion a structure of sensations to anybody but herself to besides was only a passing thought even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought if she made herself miserable the night and day it was only this much to them � ah she makes herself unhappy if she tried to be cheerful to dismiss all care to take pleasure in the day ht the flowers the baby she could only be this idea to them � ah she bears it very well moreover alone in a desert island would she have been wretched at what had happened to her not greatly if she could have been but just created to discover herself as a mother with no experience of life except as the parent of a nameless child would the position have caused her to despair no she would have taken it and found pleasures therein most of the misery had been by her conventional aspect and not by her innate sensations whatever s reasoning some spirit had induced her to dress herself up neatly as e had formerly done and come out into the fields harvest hands being greatly in demand just then this was why she had borne herself with dignity and had looked people calmly in the face at times even when holding the baby in her arms the harvest men rose from the shock of com and by op the d stretched their and extinguished their pipes the horses which had been and fed were again attached to the scarlet machine having quickly eaten her own meal beckoned to her eldest sister to come and take away the baby fastened her dress put on the gloves again and stooped anew to draw a bond from the last completed for the tying of the next in the afternoon and evening the proceedings of the morning were continued staying on till dusk with the body of then they rode home in one of the largest in the company o a broad moon that had risen from tiie ground to the its face resembling the gold leaf of some worm eaten saint s female companions sang songs and showed themselves very s and glad at her out of doors though they could not refrain from throwing in a few verses of the ballad about the maid who went to the merry green wood and came back a changed state there are and in life and the event which had made of her a social warning had also for the moment made her the most interesting personage in the village to many their friendliness won her still further away from herself their lively spirits were and she became almost gay but now that her moral sorrows were passing away a fresh one arose on the natural side of her which knew no social law when she reached home it was to learn to her grief that the baby had been suddenly taken ill since the afternoon some such had been probable so tender and was its frame but the event came as a shock nevertheless the baby s offence against society in coming into the world was forgotten by the girl mother her soul s desire was to continue that offence by preserving the life of the child however it soon grew clear that the hour of for that little prisoner of the ii by maiden no more flesh was to arrive earlier than her worst had and when she had discovered this she was plunged into a misery which that of the s simple loss her baby had not been had drifted into a frame of mind which accepted the consideration that if she should have to bum for what she had done bum she must and there was an end of it like all village girls she was well in the holy and had studied the histories of and and knew the to be drawn but when the same question 