r shed tears before since she left Windsor--tears and
sobs of hysterical joy that she had still hold of life, that she
was still on the familiar earth, with the sheep near her. The very
consciousness of her own limbs was a delight to her: she turned up her
sleeves, and kissed her arms with the passionate love of life. Soon
warmth and weariness lulled her in the midst of her sobs, and she fell
continually into dozing, fancying herself at the brink of the pool
again--fancying that she had jumped into the water, and then awaking
with a start, and wondering where she was. But at last deep dreamless
sleep came; her head, guarded by her bonnet, found a pillow against
the gorsy wall, and the poor soul, driven to and fro between two equal
terrors, found the one relief that was possible to it--the relief of
unconsciousness.

Alas! That relief seems to end the moment it has begun. It seemed to
Hetty as if those dozen dreams had only passed into another dream--that
she was in the hovel, and her aunt was standing over her with a candle
in her hand. She trembled under her aunt's glance, and opened her eyes.
There was no candle, but there was light in the hovel--the light of
early morning through the open door. And there was a face looking down
on her; but it was an unknown face, belonging to an elderly man in a
smock-frock.

"Why, what do you do here, young woman?" the man said roughly.

Hetty trembled still worse under this real fear and shame than she had
done in her momentary dream under her aunt's glance. She felt that she
was like a beggar already--found sleeping in that place. But in spite of
her trembling, she was so eager to account to the man for her presence
here, that she found words at once.

"I lost my way," she said. "I'm travelling--north'ard, and I got away
from the road into the fields, and was overtaken by the dark. Will you
tell me the way to the nearest village?"

She got up as she was speaking, and put her hands to her bonnet to
adjust it, and then laid hold of her basket.

The man looked at her with a slow bovine gaze, without giving her any
answer, for some seconds. Then he turned away and walked towards the
door of the hovel, but it was not till he got there that he stood still,
and, turning his shoulder half-round towards her, said, "Aw, I can show
you the way to Norton, if you like. But what do you do gettin' out o'
the highroad?" he added, with a tone of gruff reproof. "Y'ull be gettin'
into mischie