and Tom Bury, who were swinging on their
gate, called to her as she passed, but their gay voices jarred on her
ear, and she paid no attention to the call.

Tunxet village was built upon a sloping hill whose top was crowned
with woods. To reach these woods, Eyebright had only to climb two
stone walls and cross a field and a pasture, and as they seemed just
then the most desirable refuge possible, she made haste to do so. She
had always had a peculiar feeling for woods, a feeling made up of
terror and attraction. They were associated in her mind with fairies
and with robbers, with lost children, redbreasts, Robin Hood and his
merry men; and she was by turns eager and shy at the idea of exploring
their depths, according to which of these images happened to be
uppermost in her ideas. To-day she thought neither of Robin Hood nor
the fairies. The wood was only a place where she could hide away and
cry and be unseen, and she plunged in without a thought of fear.

In and in she went, over stones and beds of moss, and regiments of
tall brakes, which bowed and rose as she forced her way past their
stems, and saluted her with wafts of woodsy fragrance, half bitter,
half sweet, but altogether pleasant. There was something soothing in
the shade and cool quiet of the place. It fell like dew on her hot
mood, and presently her anger changed to grief, she knew not why. Her
eyes filled with tears. She sat down on a stone all brown with soft
mosses, and began to cry, softly at first, then loudly and more loud,
not taking any pains to cry quietly, but with hard sobs and great
gulps which echoed back in an odd way from the wood. It seemed a
relief at first to make as much noise as she liked with her crying,
and to know that there was no one to hear or be annoyed. It was
pleasant, too, to be able to talk out loud as well as to cry.

"They are _so_ unkind to me," she wailed, "so very unkind. Wealthy
never slapped me before. She has no right to slap me. I'll never kiss
Wealthy again,--never. O-h, she was so unkind"--

"O-h!" echoed back the wood in a hollow tone. Eyebright jumped.

"It's like a voice," she thought. "I'll go somewhere else. It isn't
nice just here. I don't like it."

So she went back a little way to the edge of the forest, where the
trees were less thick, and between their stems she could see the
village below. Here she felt safer than she had been when in the thick
wood. She threw herself down in a comfortable hollow at