might easily
have lost it here and there, where it led among the patches of
sweet-fern or bayberry bushes, or through shadowy tracts of small
white-pines. She stopped sometimes to rest, and walked more and more
wearily, with increasing effort; but she kept on her way desperately,
as if it would not do to arrive much later at the place which she was
seeking. The child seemed to be asleep; it looked too heavy for so
slight a woman to carry.

The path led after a while to a more open country, there was a low
hill to be climbed, and at its top the slender figure stopped and
seemed to be panting for breath. A follower might have noticed that it
bent its head over the child's for a moment as it stood, dark against
the darkening sky. There had formerly been a defense against the
Indians on this hill, which in the daytime commanded a fine view of
the surrounding country, and the low earthworks or foundations of the
garrison were still plainly to be seen. The woman seated herself on
the sunken wall in spite of the dampness and increasing chill, still
holding the child, and rocking to and fro like one in despair. The
child waked and began to whine and cry a little in that strange,
lonely place, and after a few minutes, perhaps to quiet it, they went
on their way. Near the foot of the hill was a brook, swollen by the
autumn rains; it made a loud noise in the quiet pasture, as if it were
crying out against a wrong or some sad memory. The woman went toward
it at first, following a slight ridge which was all that remained of a
covered path which had led down from the garrison to the spring below
at the brookside. If she had meant to quench her thirst here, she
changed her mind, and suddenly turned to the right, following the
brook a short distance, and then going straight toward the river
itself and the high uplands, which by daylight were smooth pastures
with here and there a tangled apple-tree or the grassy cellar of a
long vanished farm-house.

It was night now; it was too late in the year for the chirp of any
insects; the moving air, which could hardly be called wind, swept over
in slow waves, and a few dry leaves rustled on an old hawthorn tree
which grew beside the hollow where a house had been, and a low sound
came from the river. The whole country side seemed asleep in the
darkness, but the lonely woman felt no lack of companionship; it was
well suited to her own mood that the world slept and said nothing to
her,--it seeme