.

THE WOMAN OF THE CROSS-ROADS.
The night came down slowly.

There was no moon, the stars were few, but a mellow warmth was in the air.

At the window of her little sitting-room up-stairs Faith sat looking out into the stillness.

Beneath was the garden with its profusion of flowers and fruit; away to the left was the common; and beyond-far beyond--was a glow in the sky, a suffused light, of a delicate orange, merging away into a grey-blueness, deepening into a darker blue; and then a purple depth, palpable and heavy with a comforting silence.
There was something alluring and suggestive in the soft, smothered radiance.