rrible dream, and God would mercifully awaken her from it. She had
no penitence, no consciousness of error or offence; no knowledge
of any one circumstance but that he was gone. Yet afterwards, long
afterwards, she remembered the exact motion of a bright green beetle
busily meandering among the wild thyme near her, and she recalled the
musical, balanced, wavering drop of a skylark into her nest near the
heather-bed where she lay. The sun was sinking low, the hot air had
ceased to quiver near the hotter earth, when she bethought her once
more of the note which she had impatiently thrown down before half
mastering its contents. "Oh, perhaps," she thought, "I have been too
hasty. There may be some words of explanation from him on the other
side of the page, to which, in my blind anguish, I never turned. I
will go and find it."

She lifted herself heavily and stiffly from the crushed heather.
She stood dizzy and confused with her change of posture; and was so
unable to move at first, that her walk was but slow and tottering;
but, by-and-by, she was tasked and goaded by thoughts which forced
her into rapid motion, as if, by it, she could escape from her agony.
She came down on the level ground, just as many gay or peaceful
groups were sauntering leisurely home with hearts at ease; with low
laughs and quiet smiles, and many an exclamation at the beauty of the
summer evening.

Ever since her adventure with the little boy and his sister, Ruth had
habitually avoided encountering these happy--innocents, may I call
them?--these happy fellow-mortals! And even now, the habit grounded
on sorrowful humiliation had power over her; she paused, and then,
on looking back, she saw more people who had come into the main road
from a side path. She opened a gate into a pasture-field, and crept
up to the hedge-bank until all should have passed by, and she could
steal into the inn unseen. She sat down on the sloping turf by the
roots of an old hawthorn-tree which grew in the hedge; she was still
tearless with hot burning eyes; she heard the merry walkers pass by;
she heard the footsteps of the village children as they ran along to
their evening play; she saw the small black cows come into the fields
after being milked; and life seemed yet abroad. When would the world
be still and dark, and fit for such a deserted, desolate creature
as she was? Even in her hiding-place she was not long at peace. The
little children, with their curious eyes pee