walls might speak comfort or confirm her fears, even at that
distance. The house looked peaceful enough amid its surrounding trees
under the tranquilly broadening light of dawn, but Mrs. Rusker knew how
ghastly white the face of the poor child she loved as her own might
look in that roseate glow. Presently a thin line of smoke curled from a
chimney on the noiseless air. The farm was waking to its daily round
of life. A burly figure on horseback came towards her as she stood on a
little eminence. She waited long enough to identify Samson Mountain,
and hid among the ferns and bushes until the horse's hoof-beats had
clattered swiftly by on the stony road below her, and faded in the
distance.

Time crept on, slow but inexorable. She longed, as she had never longed
before for anything, for the courage to go to the farmhouse and ask
tidings of Julia. But her fear was greater than her longing, and she
roamed at random in a circle, never losing sight of the house, but not
daring to approach it or be seen from its windows. She dreaded what
might be the news to greet her there. She feared her own face, with its
haggard lines of sleeplessness and anxious watching. At last, from the
very depths of her misery, she plucked the heart of despairing hope, and
made for the farm. The farm labourers and country folk she met stared
after her. Even their bovine understandings were troubled by her scared
face. She scarcely saw them, or anything but the farmhouse, which drew
her now with an influence as strong as its repulsion had been an hour
ago. She entered the house by the back door, and made straight for the
sitting-room. Mrs. Mountain was there, arranging a tray, on which were
tea and jam and other homely luxuries. She wore her ordinary look of
placid contentment, and at the sight of her quiet face Mrs. Rusker
dropped panting, with a vague unformulated feeling of relief, into a
chair.

'Sakes alive! Whativer is the matter?' demanded Mrs. Mountain.

'Julia!' panted the visitor. 'How's Julia?'

'Why,' said Mrs. Mountain, 'how should her be?'

'Is she awake yet?' asked Mrs. Jenny, more calmly.

'No. Her was sleepin' when I seed her, jist for a minute, a hour ago.
I'm jist goin' upstairs wi' some breakfast for her. Well, I declare, yo'
look as pale as a ghost. What's the matter with you?'

'Oh, I've passed a miserable night,' said Mrs. Jenny, in unconscious
quotation from her favourite poet. 'I couldn't sleep a-thinkin' o'
Julia.'