Sure never was such a situation heard of! The cup of hope presented
palpably to her lips, only to vanish again--she could not tell how--and
leave no sign. A very disagreeable doubt--not yet a suspicion--began to
dawn over Mrs. Peckaby. Had she been made the subject of a practical
joke?

She might have flung the doubt from her, but for a distant sound that
came faintly on her ears--the sound of covert laughter. Her doubt turned
to conviction. Her face became hot; her heart, but for the anger at it,
would have grown sick with the disappointment. Her conductors and the
donkey were retreating, having played their joke out! Two certainties
forced themselves upon her mind. One, that Peckaby and his friends had
planned it; she felt sure now that the biggest of the "brothers" had
been nobody but Chuff, the blacksmith: the other certainty was, that she
should never be sent for to New Jerusalem in any way. Why it should have
been, Mrs. Peckaby could not have told, then or afterwards; but the
positive conviction that Brother Jarrum _had_ been false, that the story
of sending for her on a white donkey had only been invented to keep her
quiet, fixed itself in her mind in that moment in the lonely wood. She
sunk down amidst the trees and sobbed bitterly.

But all the tears combined that the world ever shed could not bring her
nearer to New Jerusalem, or make her present situation better. After
awhile she had the sense to remember that. She rose from the ground,
turned her gown up over her shoulders, found her way out of the wood,
and set off on her walk back again in a very humble frame of mind,
arriving home as the clock was striking two.

She could make nobody hear. She knocked at the door, she knocked at the
window, gently at first, then louder; she called and called, but there
came no answer. Some of the neighbours, aroused by the unwonted
disturbance, came peeping at their windows. At length Peckaby opened
his; thrusting his head out at the very casement from which Mrs. Peckaby
had beheld the deceitful vision earlier in the night.

"Who's there?" called out Peckaby.

"It's me, Peckaby," was the answer, delivered in a forlorn tone. "Come
down and open the door."

"Who's 'me'?" asked Peckaby.

"It's me," repeated Mrs. Peckaby, looking up.

And what with her height and the low casement, their faces were really
not many inches apart; but yet Peckaby appeared not to know her.

"You be off, will you!" retorted he. "A pretty