Within six hours after the receipt of this telegram, Mercy was on her way to Penfield.

Her journey would take a night and part of a day.

As the morning dawned, and she drew near the old familiar scenes, her heart was wrung with conflicting memories and hopes and fears.

The whole landscape was dreary: the fields were dark and sodden, with narrow banks of discolored snow lying under the fences, and thin rims of ice along the edges of the streams and pools.

The sky was gray; the bare trees were gray: all life looked gray and hopeless to Mercy.