The old woman sprang so suddenly from her kneeling posture as nearly to throw the slender form upon the floor, and gazed wildly in the speaker's face.
"Why aunty, don't you know me?"
"Bless me, it is her voice! but how could she rise up here on my hearth-stone to-night, like a witch or fairy?"
"No, aunty; I am no witch or fairy that has risen on your hearth. I walked all the way through the dim old forest to reach you, and it looks just as it used to, only darker and more frightful."
"Come here, darling, 'tis you! I know that voice. O how many times I've dreamed I heard it in the long, lonesome nights!" and she wept, laughed, and kissed her recovered child in a perfect abandonment of joy. "And so you have come home at last to see your old aunty? I've had awful feelings about you lately, hinney, and boding dreams; and ofttimes I've been sorry I let you go into the evil world; 'for if it should use her hard, would it not break both our hearts?' I said to myself. 'But, then, Annie is so pretty and good, and has got so much book-learnin' and so many accomplishments,' something would say. 'Ay, that's the mischief of it. Such things always make bad folks envy those that possess them, and Annie is so tender-hearted and shrinking, I'm afeard, I'm afeard for her.'"
Annie sunk her head on her aunt's shoulder while she was speaking thus, and the tears, she had been striving to suppress since her entrance, began to roll over her cheeks thick and fast. The excitement and anxiety of the journey had in a measure diverted her mind from the events which caused it; but now that she had gained the wished-for haven, her aunty's words brought the past before her vision; that mortifying humiliation—all she had enjoyed, all she had hoped for, and O, all she had lost!—rushed upon her recollection, and she sobbed aloud.
"O, mercy, mercy, it is as I feared!" exclaimed the old woman, in an agonized tone; "something has hurt my darling, and now I mark how pale and thin she is grown. Annie, Annie, tell your aunty what's the matter."
Annie made a strong effort to calm her emotion.
"I am fatigued and overcome," she said.
"Ah! it is something more than that, child—I can tell; but you shall rest till to-morrow. I'll make you a nice cup of tea, and then you shall lie in your little cot-bed once more. I've always kept it dressed white and clean, and often been in there nights before I laid my old bones down to rest, and wished I could see my darling there, breathing long and sweet, as she used to, in happy dreams."