CHAPTER XXI. DANAE EXPERUCNCES A CHANGE OF HEART.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13240, 11 August 1906, Page 6

CHAPTER XXI. DANAE EXPERUCNCES A CHANGE OF HEART.

"Alma !" " This lo'vcly girl, dressed in the lat-

est fashion, moving with the grace and ease of some grand lady. Was it a vision ? — a dream ? Alma I—this,1 — this, who had clasped his hand in both hers, and was laughing into his bewildered eyes ?— Bewildered for his hrain was whirling. '"You do not know me ?" smiled the girl. "I have so altered since that time, thai terrible night. You do not know me ?" "How could I ever forget you •?" h& rejoined, more earnestly than he was aware ; his other hand now on hers. "Yours is not a face to forget ; but I am bewildered, though heartily rejo'iccd. I believed you dead." "As 7 you," answered Alma, with the shudder which always accompanied the recollection of that supposed event ; "thank Heaven, you are not." "Thank Heaven you, too, live ; that you wore not, as I believed, carried over the precipice in that fearful storm. How did you escape?" They were still looking into each other's eyes, hands still clasped. "The storm, ah ! the storm!— it was fearful, 1 was it , not ■? I was alone among the mountains thro.ufgh it all." '•"Alone ? - 'But RaindyHNedl— the farm ?" '"From the moment I saw ' you lying on tho ground dead— dead 1 , as I thought," said Alma, "I have never soen them. Seized by au awful terror. I cannot yet forget, r I fled away from them, fled, all. night, ignorant whither, as long .as ,1 got - far from them, beyond their rfra'ch. Then tho. storm came, and then— then much happened. After — '• — " "Yoxi found relations— friends ?" he suggested, glancing round. "Friends, yes ; good, kind friends. Relations, no; I -have -no relations, unless Randy „and Ned were kin . to mo." ' ' ''"•."■• "Even if they were, you would have none now," remarked Lester R a e. "They, at least, were, without doubt, killed on the; night of/the storm." , ■*> (To be coiitimjecL)