er left the road, as became a good driver, but they
seemed to be turned inward, too, and to see more--or less--than that
empty road offered to the ordinary sight. One would have said that
something other than the present unrolled before those absorbed brown
eyes under the straight, dark brows, but whether it was the past or the
future was not shown. Either was full enough, probably, in the case of
Mrs. Stranger.

Shortly after noon she began to study the roadside more carefully and
soon, pausing by a particularly lush, green spot, she dismounted, led
the horse off from the road and quickly traced the green area back to a
tiny bubbling spring. Unharnessing the horse deftly, she fastened him
to a pointed iron picket she took from the cart and drove firmly into
the ground, lifted out a little portable tin oven which she propped
between two rocks, kindled a fire from some dried fagots tied below the
axle-tree, and taking a slice of fresh beef from a stone crock on the
seat, cut it slowly into small pieces with an onion and a yellow turnip
from the crock. She filled a small iron pot at the spring, dropped in
the meat and vegetables, set a potato to bake in the ashes and measured
out a little coffee from a cannister. While the stew simmered, she
watered and fed the horse, threw a bone to the dog, and then spread her
red cloak on the ground, sat on it, and resumed her inward
contemplation. When the savoury fumes smelled rich enough, she threw a
pinch of pepper and salt into the pot from another small cannister,
poured boiling water from her kettle over the coffee, cut a slice from
a fresh cottage loaf, ladled her stew out on a new tin plate, and ate
and drank with a sort of eager deliberation, inhaling at intervals the
aroma of the coffee and the cooking food. When a generous plateful had
vanished, she gave the anxious dog the rest, cut herself a block of
orange-coloured dairy cheese and ate it with a handful of small
biscuits from a square tin. Then, leaning against the great rock from
under which the spring gushed, she took from her ample pocket a small
worn volume, opened it at random, filled and emptied her lungs with a
third great breath, like only two others in her life, and began to read.

The book's title page read, "Compensation, and Other Essays, by R. W.
Emerson," and on the fly leaf was written in a firm, masculine hand,
"L. L. from her father, Boston, 1870."

The horse grazed quietly, the dog rested a gr