t suddenly that her little fingers were like
steel. She felt that she should kill that man if he touched her. The
fear never let go its clutch on her heart, but a fierceness as of any
wild thing at bay was over her. She realized that in another minute,
when he should see her, she would gather herself up, and spring,
spring as she had read of a tarantula springing; that she would be
first before the man, that she would kill him. Something which was
almost insanity was firing her brain.

The man, when he had stood up, it seemed to Charlotte, looked
directly at her. She was always sure that he did. But if he did, it
was with unseeing eyes. His brain did not compass the image of her
sitting there, leaning against the tree, a creature of incarnate
terror and insane fury. He seemed to keep his eyes fixed upon her for
a full second. Charlotte's nerves and muscles were tense with the
restrained impulse to spring. Then he slowly shuffled away. As he
passed, the squirrel slid like swiftness itself down the tree, and
across an open space to another. The girl sank limply upon herself in
a dead faint, and the tramp gained the road and trudged sullenly on
towards Ludbury.

When Charlotte came to herself she was still sitting there limply.
She could not realize all at once what had happened. Then she
remembered. She looked at the place where the tramp had lain, and so
forcibly did her terrified fancy project images that it was difficult
to convince herself that he was really gone. She seemed to still see
that gross thing lying there. Then she remembered distinctly that he
had gone.

She got up, but she could scarcely stand. She had never fainted
before, and she wondered at her own sensations. "What ails me?" she
thought. She strained her eyes around, but there was no sign of the
terrible man. She was quite sure that he had gone, and yet how could
she be sure? He might have gone out to the road and be sitting beside
it. A vivid recollection of tramps sitting beside that very road, as
she had been driving past, came over her. She became quite positive
that he was out on the road, and a terror of the road was over her.
She looked behind her, and the sunny gleam of an open field came
through the trees. The field was shaggy with blue asters and
golden-rod gone to seed, and white tufts of immortelles. Charlotte
stared through the trees at the field, and suddenly a man crossed the
little sunny opening. A great joy swept over her; he was