o'clock, five hours.

'Therefore I shall have to start at seven.'

No surprise or sense of unwontedness entered the minds of the servants
at her early ride. The monotony of life we associate with people of
small incomes in districts out of the sound of the railway whistle, has
one exception, which puts into shade the experience of dwellers about
the great centres of population--that is, in travelling. Every journey
there is more or less an adventure; adventurous hours are necessarily
chosen for the most commonplace outing. Miss Elfride had to leave
early--that was all.

Elfride never went out on horseback but she brought home
something--something found, or something bought. If she trotted to town
or village, her burden was books. If to hills, woods, or the seashore,
it was wonderful mosses, abnormal twigs, a handkerchief of wet shells or
seaweed.

Once, in muddy weather, when Pansy was walking with her down the street
of Castle Boterel, on a fair-day, a packet in front of her and a packet
under her arm, an accident befell the packets, and they slipped down.
On one side of her, three volumes of fiction lay kissing the mud; on
the other numerous skeins of polychromatic wools lay absorbing it.
Unpleasant women smiled through windows at the mishap, the men all
looked round, and a boy, who was minding a ginger-bread stall whilst
the owner had gone to get drunk, laughed loudly. The blue eyes turned to
sapphires, and the cheeks crimsoned with vexation.

After that misadventure she set her wits to work, and was ingenious
enough to invent an arrangement of small straps about the saddle, by
which a great deal could be safely carried thereon, in a small compass.
Here she now spread out and fastened a plain dark walking-dress and
a few other trifles of apparel. Worm opened the gate for her, and she
vanished away.

One of the brightest mornings of late summer shone upon her. The heather
was at its purplest, the furze at its yellowest, the grasshoppers
chirped loud enough for birds, the snakes hissed like little engines,
and Elfride at first felt lively. Sitting at ease upon Pansy, in her
orthodox riding-habit and nondescript hat, she looked what she felt. But
the mercury of those days had a trick of falling unexpectedly. First,
only for one minute in ten had she a sense of depression. Then a large
cloud, that had been hanging in the north like a black fleece, came and
placed itself between her and the sun. It helped on what