unhesitatingly said, "No." An instinctive wisdom seemed to direct
Hetty's every step. She waited at some little distance from the station
till the train came up: then, without going upon the station platform at
all, she entered the rear car from the opposite side of the road. No one
saw her; not even a brakeman. When the train began to move, the sense of
what she had done smote her with a sudden terror, and she sprang to
her feet, but sank down again, before any of the sleepy passengers had
observed her motion. In a few moments she was calm. Her long habits of
firm, energetic action began to resume sway: she compelled herself to
look forward into the future, and not backward into the past she was so
resolutely leaving behind her. Strangely enough, it was not her husband
that she found hardest to banish from her thoughts now, but Raby. She
could not escape from the vivid imagination of the dear child running in
terror alone through the long stretch of woods.

"I wonder if he will cry," thought poor Hetty: "I hope not." And the
tears filled her eyes. Then she fell to wondering if there would be any
doubt in anybody's mind that her boat had suddenly capsized. "They will
think I leaned over to pick something off the bushes on the edge of the
island," said she. "I have come very near capsizing that way more than
once, and I have always told Eben when it had happened. That is the
first thing he will think of." And thus, in a maze of incoherent
crowding conjectures and imaginings, all making up one great misery,
Hetty sat whirling away from her home. By and by, her brain grew less
active; thought was paralyzed by pain. She sat motionless, taking no
note of the hours of the night as they sped by, and roused from her
dull reverie only when she saw the first faint red tinge of dawn in the
eastern sky. Then she started up, with a fresh realization of all.
"Oh, it is morning!" she said. "Have they given over looking for me, I
wonder. I suppose they have been looking all night. By this time, they
must be sure I am drowned. After I know all that is over, I shall feel
easier. It can't be quite so hard to bear as this."

In all Hetty's imaginings of her plan, she had leaped over the interval
of transition from the life she left to the life she proposed to lead.
She had pictured herself always as having attained the calm rest of the
shelter she would seek, the strong moral support of the work she would
do. She had not dwelt on this wre