The day had not yet dawned, and all lay still in that house when Mercy Fisher opened noiselessly the door of her room and crept stealthily down the stairs. It was very dark in the bar below, and she had no light. The sickening odor of dead tobacco was in the air. She carried a little bundle in one hand, and with the other she felt her way around the walls until she came to the outer door. A heavy chain fastened it, and with nervous fingers she drew it out of the slide. When free of its groove, it slipped from her hand, and fell against the door-jamb with a clang. The girl's heart leaped to her throat. At first she crouched in fear, then lifted the latch, opened the door, and fled away into the gloom without, leaving the door wide open.

Never to the last day of her life did she know what purpose guided her in that hour. She had no object, no aim. Only to fly away from a broken heart. Only to lie down on the earth and know no more, with all the heartache over. But she was drifting in her blind misery to that reservoir of life, London.

She hurried down the road, never once looking back. The leafless trees were surging in the night-wind; their gaunt branches were waving grimly over her head. The hedges took fantastic shapes before her, and beside her. Her limbs trembled and her teeth chattered, yet she hastened on. Her head ached. She felt suffocated. The world was so cruel to her. If only she could fly from it and forget—only forget!

The day was dawning; the deep blue of the sky to the left of her was streaked with thin bars. All before her was a blank void of dun gray. A veil of vapor beat against her cheeks. The wide marshy lands lay in mist around her. Not a sound but her own footstep on the road. Not a bird in the empty air, not a cloud in the blank sky. It was a dreary scene; neither day nor night.

And through this grim realm that is aloof from all that is human, one poor, broken-hearted girl hurried on, her little bundle in her hand, a shawl wrapped about her shoulders, her red, tearless eyes fixed in front of her.

Like the spirit of unrest, the wind moaned and soughed. Now and then a withered leaf of last year went by her with a light rustle and stealthy motion. Desolate as the heart within her was the waste ground.

Bit by bit the gray sky lightened; the east was fretted over with pink, and a freshness was breathed into the air. Then she began to run. Behind her were all her pretty dreams, and they were dead. Behind her was the love she had cherished, and that was dead, too. From a joyful vision she had awakened to find the idol cold at her breast.

Running hard along the gloomy road, under the empty sky, through the surging wind, the outcast girl cried in her tearless grief as a little child cries for the mother who is in her grave—never knowing its loss until it has grown tired, and weary, and sick, and the night is very near.

She came to a brick-kiln that stood back from the road. Its wreathing smoke coiled slowly upward in the smoke-like atmosphere. The red haze drew her to it, as it drew the shivering waifs of the air. Cold and tired, she crept up and stood some minutes in the glow; but a step fell on her ear from behind the kiln, and she stole away like a guilty thing.

Away, away, she knew not where. On, on, she knew not why.

The day had dawned now. In the brightness of morning her heart sunk lower. Draggled and soiled, her hair still damp with the dew, and the odor of night in her dress, she walked on in the golden radiance of the risen sun.

Oh, to bury herself forever, and yet not to die—no, no, not to die!

At a cross-road there was a finger-post, and it read, "To Kilburn." Beyond it there was a wood, and the sunlight played on the pine-trees and reddened the dead leaves that still clung to an oak. She was warm now, but, oh! so tired. Behind the ambush of a holly-bush, close to the road, Mercy crouched down on a drift of withered leaves at the foot of a stout beech. She dozed a little and started. All was quiet. Then weary nature conquered fear, and overcame sorrow, and she slept.

And sleep—that makes kings and queens of us all—gracious sleep, made a queen of the outcast girl, a queen of love; and she dreamed of her home among the mountains.

Mercy was still sleeping when a covered wagon, such as carriers use, came trundling along the road. The driver, a bright-eyed man, with the freshness of the fields in his face, sat on the front rail and whistled. His horse shied at something, and this made him get up. He was at that moment in front of the holly-bush, and he saw Mercy lying behind it.

Her face was worn and pale, her bonnet fallen back from her forehead, her head leaning against the trunk of the tree, one hand on her breast, the other straying aside on the drift of yellow leaves, where a little bundle covered by a red handkerchief had fallen from her graspless fingers, and the radiant morning sunlight over all.

The driver of the wagon jumped to the ground. At the same moment Mercy awoke with a frightened look. She rose to her feet, and would have hurried away.

"Young to be wagranting about, ain't ye, miss?" said the driver. His tone was kindlier than his words.

"Let me go, please," said Mercy, and she tried to pass.

"Coorse, coorse; if yer wants to."

Mercy thanked him, her eyes on the ground. She was already on the road.

"Being as you're going my way, I ain't objecting to giving you a lift."

"No, thank you. I have no—I've no money. I must run."

"You'll wait till I ax for it, won't ye, missy? Come, get up."

"And will you let me go down whenever I like?"

"Coorse I will; why not? Up with ye! There, easy, kneel on the shaft, that's the size of it. Now, go set yourself down on them sacks. Them's apples, them is. Right? Very well. We're off, then."

The wagon was about half full of sacks, and Mercy crept down in the furthest corner.

"I ain't in the apple line reg'lar. I'm a fern-gatherer, that's wot I am. On'y nature don't keep ferning all the year round, so I'se forced to go fruiting winter times—buying apples same as them from off'n the farmers down the country, and bringing 'em up to Covent Garden. That's where I'm going now, that is. And got to be there afore the sales starts."

Mercy listened, but said nothing.

"You know Covent Garden—not fur from Leicester Square and the Haymarket?"

Mercy shook her head.

"What! Never been there—and that near?"

Mercy shook her head again and dropped her eyes.

The driver twisted about to look at her. "Let a be, she's feeling it bad," he thought, and was silent for a moment. Then he twisted about for another look.

"I say, missy, got bad eyes?"

"They're sore, and a little dim," said Mercy.

"Blest if you don't look the spitting image of a friend of mine—'boutn the eyes, I mean—red and swelled up and such. It was Tom Crow, a partner of mine, in fact. Tom caught cold sleeping out one night as we was ferning down Roger Tichborne's estates—him as was the claimant for 'em, you know, on'y he didn't get 'em. The cold flew to Tom's eyes straight, and blest if he ain't gone blind as a mole."

Mercy's lips quivered. The driver stopped his chatter, conscious that he had gone too far, and then, with somewhat illogical perversity, he proceeded to express his vexation at himself by punishing his horse.

"Get along, you stupid old perwerse old knacker's crutch!"

The horse set off at a trot. They passed through a village, and Mercy read the name "Child's Hill" printed on the corner of a house.

"Is it London you are going to?" said Mercy, timidly; "Covent Garden—is that London?"

"Eh?" The driver opened his eyes very wide in a blank stare.

Mercy trembled and held down her head. They jogged on awhile in silence, and then the driver, who had cast furtive glances at the girl, drew rein, and said: "I'm wexed as I said Tom Crow was as blind as a mole. How-and-ever, a mole ain't blind, and it's on'y them coster chaps as think so, but I've caught a many of 'em out ferning. Besides, Tom was a-worrited with his missus, Tom was, and happen that was worse nor his cold.

("Git along, you old perwerse old file!)

"You see, Tom's missus cut away and left him. As young as you, and maybe as good to look at, but a bad 'un; and she broke Tom's heart, as the saying is. So Tom left the ferning. He hadn't no heart for it. Ferning's a thing as wants heart, it do. He started costering first, and now Tom's got a 'tater-ingine, on'y being as he's blind he has a boy to wheel it. And that woman, she done it all. 'Jim Groundsell,' he says to me—that's my name—'Jim,' he says, 'don't fix your heart on nothing,' he says, 'and keep to your sight and the ferning.'

("Well, you perwerse old crutch! Get along with you!)

"But I went and done it myself. And now my missus, she's a invalide, as they say, and she ain't out o' bed this twelvemonth come Christmas, and she gets lonesome lying all by herself, and frets a bit maybe, and—

("Git along, will you, you wexing old fence!")

There was a long silence this time. They were leaving the green fields behind them, and driving through longer streets than Mercy had ever seen before. Though the sun was shining feebly, the lamps on the pavement were still burning. They passed a church, and Mercy saw by the clock that it was hard on eight. They drove briskly through Camden Town into St. Giles's, and so on to Long Acre.

The streets were thronged by this time. Troops of people were passing to and fro. Cabs and omnibuses were rattling hither and thither. At every turn the crowd became denser and the noise louder. Mercy sat in her corner, bewildered. The strange city frightened her. For the time it drove away the memory of her sorrow.

When they reached Covent Garden, Jim, the driver, drew up with a jerk, and nodded to some of the drivers of similar wagons, and hailed others with a lusty shout. All was a babel to the girl's dazed sense: laughter, curses, yelling, whooping, quarreling.

Mercy's head ached. She got down, hardly knowing what to do next. Where was she to go? In that wilderness of London, more desolate than the trackless desert, what was she?

She stood a moment on the pavement, her little bundle in her hand, and all the bewildering scene went round and round. The tears rose to her eyes, and the glare and noise and the tumult were blotted out.

The next instant she felt herself being lifted back into the wagon, and then she remembered nothing more.