icar of Cator Hill, the neighbouring
parish.

The house now was empty and silent. They must escape from that figure,
now decent, clean, and solemn, lying upon the bed upstairs. Mathew took
his niece by the hand and said:

"My dear, a little fresh air is the thing for both of us. It will cheer
you up."

So they went out for a walk together. Maggie knew, with a deep and
intimate experience, every lane and road within twenty miles' radius of
St. Dreot's, There was the high-road that went through Gator Hill to
Clinton and then to Polwint; here were the paths across the fields to
Lucent, the lanes that led to the valley of the Lisp, all the paths
like spiders' webs through Rothin Wood, from whose curve you could see
Polchester, grey and white, with its red-brown roofs and the spires of
the Cathedral thrusting like pointing fingers into the heaven. It was
the Polchester View that she chose to-day, but as they started through
the deep lanes down the St. Dreot's hill she was startled and disturbed
by the strange aspect which everything wore to her. She had not as yet
realised the great shock her father's death had been; she was
exhausted, spiritually and physically, in spite of the deep sleep of
the night before. The form and shape of the world was a little strained
and fantastic, the colours uncertain, now vivid, now vanishing, the
familiar trees, hedges, clouds, screens, as it were, concealing some
scene that was being played behind them. But beyond and above all other
sensations she was conscious of her liberty. She struggled against
this; she should be conscious, before everything, of her father's loss.
But she was not. It meant to her at present not so much the loss of a
familiar figure as the sudden juggling, by an outside future, of all
the regular incidents and scenes of her daily life, as at a pantomime
one sees by a transformation of the scenery, the tables, the chairs,
and pictures the walls dance to an unexpected jig. She was free, free,
free--alone but free. What form her life would take she did not know,
what troubles and sorrows in the future there might be she did not
care--to-morrow her life would begin.

Although unsentimental she was tender-hearted and affectionate, but
now, for many years, her life with her father had been a daily battle
of ever-increasing anger and bitterness. It may be that once he had
loved her; that had been in those days when she was not old enough to
love him ... since she had kno