The widow hastened to her side, knelt clown by her, took the injured foot with tender care in her delicate and slender hands, examined it attentively, felt it gently, and then exclaimed with horror: "Good Lord! and did you walk through the streets with a foot in this state ?" and looking up at Selene she said affectionately.

"Poor child, poor child! it must have hurt you! Why the swelling has risen above your sandal-straps.

It is frightful! and yet--do you live far from this ?" "I can get home in half an hour." "Impossible! First let me see on my tablets how much the paymaster owes you that I may go and fetch it, and then we will soon see what can be done with you.

Meanwhile you sit still daughter dear, and you Mary rest her foot on a stool and undo the straps very gently from her ankle.

Do not be afraid my child, she has soft, careful hands." As she spoke she rose and kissed Selene on her forehead and eyes, and Selene clung to her and could only say with swimming eyes, and a voice trembling with feeling: "Dame Hannah, dear widow Hannah." As the warm sunshine of an October clay reminds the traveller of the summer that is over, so the widow's words and ways brought back to Selene the long lost love and care of her good mother; and something soothing mingled in the bitterness of the pain she was suffering.