ed herself back at the forks. Suppose Mrs. Fitch told him of
her visit! Perhaps she could pass the Jenneys' unnoticed. The chances of
this, indeed, seemed highly favourable, and it was characteristic of her
sex that she began to pray fervently to this end. Then she turned off
the hill road, feeling as though she had but to look back to see the
smoke of the burning bridges.

Victoria remembered the farm now; for Mr. Jabe Jenney, being a person
of importance in the town of Leith, had a house commensurate with
his estate. The house was not large, but its dignity was akin to Mr.
Jenney's position: it was painted a spotless white, and not a shingle or
a nail was out of place. Before it stood the great trees planted by Mr.
Jenney's ancestors, which Victoria and other people had often paused on
their drives to admire, and on the hillside was a little, old-fashioned
flower garden; lilacs clustered about the small-paned windows, and a
bitter-sweet clung to the roof and pillars of the porch. These details
of the place (which she had never before known as Mr. Jenney's)
flashed into Victoria's mind before she caught sight of the great trees
themselves looming against the sombre blue-black of the sky: the wind,
rising fitfully, stirred the leaves with a sound like falling waters,
and a great drop fell upon her cheek. Victoria raised her eyes in alarm,
and across the open spaces, toward the hills which piled higher and
higher yet against the sky, was a white veil of rain. She touched with
her whip the shoulder of her horse, recalling a farm a quarter of a mile
beyond--she must not be caught here!

More drops followed, and the great trees seemed to reach out to her a
protecting shelter. She spoke to the horse. Beyond the farm-house, on
the other side of the road, was a group of gray, slate-shingled barns,
and here two figures confronted her. One was that of the comfortable,
middle-aged Mr. Jenney himself, standing on the threshold of the barn,
and laughing heartily, and crying: "Hang on to him That's right--get him
by the nose!"

The person thus addressed had led a young horse to water at the spring
which bubbled out of a sugar-kettle hard by; and the horse, quivering,
had barely touched his nostrils to the water when he reared backward,
jerking the halter-rope taut. Then followed, with bewildering rapidity,
a series of manoeuvres on the part of the horse to get away, and on the
part of the person to prevent this, and inasmuch as th