ross the meadows, I could not but see that her
bags were many and looked heavy, and twice she set them down to
rearrange. I think a ghost of the road could have done no less than ask
to help her. And I did this with an abruptness of which I am unwilling
master, though indeed I had no need to assume impatience, for I saw that
my quiet walk was spoiled.

When I spoke to her, she started and shrank away; but there was an
austerity in the lonely white road and in the country silence which must
have chilled a woman like her; and her bags were many and seemed heavy.

"Much obliged to you," she said indistinctly. "I'd just as li've you
should take the basket, if you want."

So I lifted the basket and trudged beside her, hoping very much that she
would not talk. For though for my own comfort I would walk far to avoid
treading on a nest, or a worm, or a magenta flower (and I loathe
magenta), yet I am often blameful enough to wound through the sheerest
bungling those who talk to me when I would rather be silent.

The night was one clinging to the way of Autumn, and as yet with no
Winter hinting. The air was mild and dry, and the sky was starry. I am
not ashamed that on a quiet highroad on a starry night I love to be
silent, and even to forget concerns of my own which seem pressing in the
publicity of the sun; but I am ashamed, I own, to have been called to
myself that night by a little choking breath of haste.

"I can't go--so fast," my companion said humbly; "you might jest--set
the basket down anywheres. I can--"

But I think that she can hardly have heard my apology, for she stood
where she had halted, staring away from me. We were opposite the
cemetery lying in its fence of field stone and whitewashed rails.

"O my soul, my soul!" I heard her say. "I'd forgot the graveyard, or I
couldn't never 'a' come this way."

At that she went on, her feet quickening, as I thought, without her
will; and she kept her face turned to me, so that it should be away from
that whitewashed fence. And now because of the wound she had shown me, I
walked a little apart in the middle of the road for my attempt at
sympathy. So we came to the summit of the hill, and there the dark
suddenly yielded up the distance. The lamps of the village began to
signal, lights dotted the fields and gathered in a cosey blur in the
valley, and half a mile to westward the headlight that marked the big
Toplady barn and the little Toplady house shone out as if som