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: CHAPTER III. CROSS THREADS. AND in all the world there was but one person to whom she could speak, for but one had guessed her secret ; even Gyda. It seemed to the girl afterwards as if at this time again her mother's prayers must have been around her; so clear and swift and instinctive were her decisions, in the chaos of all other things. No danger now of meeting any one at the cottage. But how to get there ? Not through Morton Hollow, not on Jeannie Deans,—oh no, oh no ! If she went, she must go by that other almost impossible way, which was not a way. She would drive to the foot of the hill, and leave the carriage there, and not take Lewis to see where she went. How she did it, Hazel never remembered afterwards. She left the carriage with a cheery word to Reo, and then set her face to the hill ; the little feet toiling on with swift eagerness through briers and over stones, finding her way she knew not how ; conscious only that she did not feel the ground under her feet, but seemed to be walking on nothing, so that she had every now and then a sort of fear of pitching forward. She had set out in good season, but it was past midday when she stood before the cottage. If she knocked as no other hand had ever knocked ihere; if her face at the opening door stanled Gyda beyond words ; of this, too, the girl knew nothing. For with thefirst sight of Gyda, there came such a surge of the sorrow! in which she was plunged, that Hazel stepped one step within the door and dropped -all unconscious at the old Norsewoman's feet. Gyda was quite unable to lift her, light as the burden would have been ; but what she could she was prompt and skilful to do. She brought cushions to put under Wych Hazel's head, applied cold water and hartshorn ; foi Gyda was too much in request as a villag...