to the
Mountain. The deserted house was on the road; but the idea of spending
the night there was unendurable, and she meant to try to push on to
Hamblin, where she could sleep under a wood-shed if her strength should
fail her. Her preparations had been made with quiet forethought. Before
starting she had forced herself to swallow a glass of milk and eat a
piece of bread; and she had put in her canvas satchel a little packet of
the chocolate that Harney always carried in his bicycle bag. She wanted
above all to keep up her strength, and reach her destination without
attracting notice....

Mile by mile she retraced the road over which she had so often flown to
her lover. When she reached the turn where the wood-road branched off
from the Creston highway she remembered the Gospel tent--long since
folded up and transplanted--and her start of involuntary terror when
the fat evangelist had said: "Your Saviour knows everything. Come and
confess your guilt." There was no sense of guilt in her now, but only
a desperate desire to defend her secret from irreverent eyes, and
begin life again among people to whom the harsh code of the village was
unknown. The impulse did not shape itself in thought: she only knew
she must save her baby, and hide herself with it somewhere where no one
would ever come to trouble them.

She walked on and on, growing more heavy-footed as the day advanced. It
seemed a cruel chance that compelled her to retrace every step of the
way to the deserted house; and when she came in sight of the orchard,
and the silver-gray roof slanting crookedly through the laden branches,
her strength failed her and she sat down by the road-side. She sat there
a long time, trying to gather the courage to start again, and walk past
the broken gate and the untrimmed rose-bushes strung with scarlet hips.
A few drops of rain were falling, and she thought of the warm evenings
when she and Harney had sat embraced in the shadowy room, and the noise
of summer showers on the roof had rustled through their kisses. At
length she understood that if she stayed any longer the rain might
compel her to take shelter in the house overnight, and she got up and
walked on, averting her eyes as she came abreast of the white gate and
the tangled garden.

The hours wore on, and she walked more and more slowly, pausing now and
then to rest, and to eat a little bread and an apple picked up from the
roadside. Her body seemed to grow heavier with e