Page 98 - Adventures in shadow-land

sion. They seemed troubled, and every now and
then one of them would point to the brook, and
*
then shake her head; and Eva was going to ask
them what could possibly have happened, and

what the matter was, when they saw her; and
then the whole crowd came around her, and be­

fore she could say a word, they exclaimed, with
one voice:

“ Oh, E va! E v a ! what have you done? You
forgot your promise ; you went to the brook, and

you heard its story ?”
Then it came into Eva’s mind that she must

leave the children, who seemed so sorry for what
she had done, and she hung her head and said,

tim idly:
“ I could not help it,”

“ It is true, and only what we feared," one of
them said,— the same one who had spoken to Eva

through the door. “ We knew how it would be
before we left you. You could not help it, for it
was Fate, and no promise can bar the power, no

wishes change the will, of Fate.**

Then Eva began to tell them her story. And
they all listened, and when she told them how the