.

When Charlotte perceived him she turned pale and her heart seemed to
stop. Her first impulse was to rise and make a mad rush for the road.
Then she became afraid to do that. The road was lonely. She heard no
sound of wheels thereon. It was true that she had entered the grove
and seated herself without awakening the man; he might quite possibly
be in a drunken sleep, difficult to disturb, but she might not be so
fortunate a second time. Her slightest motion might awaken him now.
So she sat perfectly still; she did not move a finger; it seemed to
her she did not breathe. When a slight breeze rustled the tree-boughs
over her head, and ruffled the skirt of her dress, her terror made
her sick. When the breeze struck him, the sleeping tramp made an
uneasy motion, and she felt overwhelmed. Soon, however, he began to
breathe heavily. Before his breathing had been inaudible. He was
evidently quite soundly asleep, yet if a breeze could disturb him,
what might not her rise and flight do? It seemed to her that she must
remain there forever. But the time would come when that sleeping
terror would awake, whether she disturbed him or not, when that
distorted caricature of man, as grotesque as a gargoyle on the temple
of life, would stretch those twisted legs and arms, and open his eyes
and see her; and then? She became sure, the longer she looked, that
this was not one of the harmless wanderers over the earth, one of the
Ishmaels, whose hand is turned only against himself. The great dark,
bloated face had a meaning that could not be mistaken even by eyes
for whom its meaning was written in a strange language. Innocence
read guilt by a strange insight of heredity which came to her from
the old beginning of things. She dared not stir. She felt petrified.
She realized that her one hope was in the passing of some one on the
road. She made up her mind that if she heard wheels she would risk
everything. She would spring up and run for her life and scream. Then
she wondered how loudly she could scream. Charlotte was not one of
the screaming kind of girls who lifts up her voice of panic at
everything. She tried to remember if she had ever screamed, and how
loudly. She kept her ears strained for the sound of wheels, her eyes
on the sleeping tramp. She dared not look away from him. Even the
squirrel remained motionless, with his round eyes of wariness fixed.
It was as if he too were afraid to stir. He retained his attitude of
alert grace, s