to turn for refuge from swift-advancing
shame, understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost
lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath,
yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness.

Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the
blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came
close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear
with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow in
it: no wonder he needs a suffering God.

Hetty, in her red cloak and warm bonnet, with her basket in her hand, is
turning towards a gate by the side of the Treddleston road, but not that
she may have a more lingering enjoyment of the sunshine and think
with hope of the long unfolding year. She hardly knows that the sun is
shining; and for weeks, now, when she has hoped at all, it has been for
something at which she herself trembles and shudders. She only wants to
be out of the high-road, that she may walk slowly and not care how her
face looks, as she dwells on wretched thoughts; and through this gate
she can get into a field-path behind the wide thick hedgerows. Her great
dark eyes wander blankly over the fields like the eyes of one who is
desolate, homeless, unloved, not the promised bride of a brave tender
man. But there are no tears in them: her tears were all wept away in
the weary night, before she went to sleep. At the next stile the pathway
branches off: there are two roads before her--one along by the hedgerow,
which will by and by lead her into the road again, the other across
the fields, which will take her much farther out of the way into the
Scantlands, low shrouded pastures where she will see nobody. She chooses
this and begins to walk a little faster, as if she had suddenly thought
of an object towards which it was worth while to hasten. Soon she is in
the Scantlands, where the grassy land slopes gradually downwards, and
she leaves the level ground to follow the slope. Farther on there is a
clump of trees on the low ground, and she is making her way towards it.
No, it is not a clump of trees, but a dark shrouded pool, so full with
the wintry rains that the under boughs of the elder-bushes lie low
beneath the water. She sits down on the grassy bank, against the
stooping stem of the great oak that hangs over the dark pool. She has
thought of this pool often in the nights of the month that has just gon