Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: GREAT, solemn stretch of sky, alive with stars. A sheet of silent water. A long line of silent hills. She had acted out her dream ! When the truth came to Gypsy, she sat for a moment like one stunned. The terrible sense of awakening in a desolate place, at midnight, and alone, in- S;"d of in a safe and quiet bed, with bolted 'doors, and friends within the slightest call, , might well alarm an older and stouter heart than Gypsy's. The consciousness of having wandered she did not know whither, she did not know how, in the helplessness of sleep, into a place where her voice could reach no human ear, was in itself enough to freeze her where she sat, with hands locked, and wide, frigh1. ened eyes, staring into the darkness. After a few moments she stirred, shivered a little, and looked about her. It was the Basin, surely. There were the maples, there was the Kleiner Berg rolling up, soft and shadowy, among its pines. There were the mountains, towering and sharp—terrible shadows against the sky. Here, too, was the Dipper beneath her, swaying idly back and forth upon the water. She remembered, with a little cry of joy, that the boat was always locked; she could not have stirred from the shore; it would be but the work of a moment to' jump upon the wharf, then back swiftly through the fields to the house. She looked back. The wharf was not in sight. A dark distance lay between her and it.The beds of lily-leaves, and the dropping blossoms of the maples were about her on every side. She had drifted half across the pond. She understood it all in a moment—she had not locked the boat that afternoon. What was to be done ? The oars were half a mile away, in the barn at home. There was not so much as a branch floating within reach on the water. She tried to pull up the b...