the
mind's measurement it would be hard to tell. It was one breathless
sense of pain and fear; of which moonlight and shadows and the points
of the way all made part and were woven in together. Her ears were
tingling for that sound; her eyes only measured unconsciously the
distances and told off the waymarks. Down the little pitch of the road
where that to Barley point forked off; then by a space of clear fences
where hedgerows were not, and a barn or two rose up in the moonlight;
through gates where the post shadows were black and deep, by the
skirting bushes that now and then gathered about the rails. She walked
as fast as she could and keep her strength. That was unconsciously
measured too. It had seemed to her, in her agony of pleading before the
commencing of this strange walk, that it was _impossible_ she should do
it. She was doing it now, under a force of will that she had not been
able to withstand; and her mind was subdued and strained beyond the
power of thinking. Her very walking seemed to her mechanical; intensely
alive as her senses were all the time. There was a transient relief at
coming into the neighbourhood of a house, and a drear feeling of
desolation and increased danger as she left it behind her; but her pace
neither faltered nor flagged. She looked round sometimes, but never
paused for that. Before the more thickly settled part of the village
was reached her step grew a little slower, probably from the sheer
necessity of failing strength; but steady it was, at whatever rate of
travel. When at last they turned the sandy corner into the broad street
or main way of the village, where houses and gardens often broke the
range of hedgeway or fence, and lights spoke to lights in the
neighbouring windows, Faith stopped and stood leaning against the
fence. In another moment she was drawn away from that to a better
support.
"Are you faint?" Mr. Linden said.
Her "no" was faint, but the answer was true for all the rest of her.
He drew her hand within his arm, and went on silently; but how glad he
was to see her home, Faith might guess from the way she was half
carried up the steps and into the hall, and the door shut and locked
behind her. After the same fashion she was taken into the sitting-room
and placed in the easy chair, and her wrappers unfastened and taken off
with very gentle and quick hands. She offered almost as little help as
hindrance, and her head sank immediately.
He stood by her, and
|