on his horse, and a horse in the shafts of
the cart that held the victuals, a woman came running after them with
a child in her arms, and besought them to take her with them. That
anyone could wish to share their outcast state was their first
surprise, but the woman's terrified looks, her tears and passionate
pleadings, seemed to say that to be homeless and houseless on the
face of that trackless land was not so awful a fate but that other
miseries could conquer the fear of it. So, failing to learn more of
her condition, than that she was friendless and alone, Adam ordered
that, with her child, she should be lifted into the cart that was
driven ahead of them.

But within an hour they were overtaken by a man, who came galloping
after them, and said the woman had stolen the child--that it was his
child, and that he had come to carry it back with him. At that Adam
called on the woman to answer through the guide, and she said that
the man was indeed the child's father, but that she was its mother;
that he was a farmer, and had married her only that he might have a
son to leave his farm to; that having given him this child he had
turned her out of doors, and that in love and yearning for her little
one, from whom she had been so cruelly parted, she had stolen into
her old home, plucked up the babe and run away with it. Hearing this
story, which the woman told through her tears, Adam answered the man
that if the law of his country allowed a father to deal so with the
mother of his child it was a base and unnatural law, and merited the
obedience of no man; so he meant to protect the woman against both it
and him, and carry her along with their company. With that answer the
man turned tail, but Adam's victory over him was dearly bought, at
the cost of much vexation afterwards and sore delay on the hard
journey.

And now it would be long to tell of the trials of that passage over
those gaunt solitudes, where there was no fingerpost or mark of other
human travellers. The men bore up bravely, loving most to comfort the
woman and do her any tender office, or carry her child before them on
their saddles. And many a time, at sight of the little one, and at
hearing its simple prattle in a tongue they did not understand, the
poor fellows would burst into tears, as if remembering, with a
double pang, that they were exiles from that country far away, where
other mothers held their own children to their breasts. Two of them
sickened o