ring--or was it already
the stain of dead leaves? Hale could have told her. Those leaves were
floating through the shadows and when the wind moved, others zig-zagged
softly down to join them. The wind was helping them on the water, too,
and along came one brown leaf that was shaped like a tiny trireme--its
stem acting like a rudder and keeping it straight before the breeze--so
that it swept past the rest as a yacht that she was once on had swept
past a fleet of fishing sloops. She was not unlike that swift little
ship and thirty yards ahead were rocks and shallows where it and the
whole fleet would turn topsy-turvy--would her own triumph be as short
and the same fate be hers? There was no question as to that, unless she
took the wheel of her fate in her own hands and with them steered the
ship. Thinking hard, she walked on slowly, with her hands behind her
and her eyes bent on the road. What should she do? She had no money, her
father had none to spare, and she could accept no more from Hale. Once
she stopped and stared with unseeing eyes at the blue sky, and once
under the heavy helplessness of it all she dropped on the side of the
road and sat with her head buried in her arms--sat so long that she rose
with a start and, with an apprehensive look at the mounting sun, hurried
on. She would go to the Gap and teach; and then she knew that if she
went there it would be on Hale's account. Very well, she would not blind
herself to that fact; she would go and perhaps all would be made up
between them, and then she knew that if that but happened, nothing else
could matter...

When she reached the miller's cabin, she went to the porch without
noticing that the door was closed. Nobody was at home and she turned
listlessly. When she reached the gate, she heard the clock beginning
to strike, and with one hand on her breast she breathlessly listened,
counting--"eight, nine, ten, eleven"--and her heart seemed to stop in
the fraction of time that she waited for it to strike once more. But it
was only eleven, and she went on down the road slowly, still thinking
hard. The old miller was leaning back in a chair against the log side
of the mill, with his dusty slouched hat down over his eyes. He did not
hear her coming and she thought he must be asleep, but he looked up with
a start when she spoke and she knew of what he, too, had been thinking.
Keenly his old eyes searched her white face and without a word he got up
and reached for anot