ts of the wood quite
strange to her, but she thought she must be a great way from home, and
quite beyond recognition, so she followed the voice, and soon came out
on a tiny meadow glade, where a stout girl was milking a great sheeted
cow.

She knew now that she was faint with hunger and thirst, and must take
food before she could go much farther, so taking out a groat, her
smallest coin, she accosted the girl, and offered it for a draught
of milk. To her dismay the girl exclaimed "Lawk! It be young Madam!
Sarvice, ma'am!"

"I have lost myself in the wood," said Aurelia. "I should be much
obliged for a little milk."

"Well to be sure. Think of that! And have ee been out all night? Ye
looks whisht!" said the girl, readily filling a wooden cup she had
brought with her, for in those days good new milk was a luxury far more
easily accessible than in ours. She added a piece of barley bread, her
own intended breakfast, and was full of respectful wonder, pity, and
curiosity, proposing that young Madam should come and rest in mother's
cottage in the wood, and offering to guide her home as soon as the cows
were milked and the pigs fed. Aurelia had some difficulty in shaking her
off, finding also that she had gone round and round in the labyrinthine
paths, and was much nearer the village of Bowstead than she had
intended.

Indeed, she was obliged to deceive the kindly girl by walking off in the
direction she pointed out, intending to strike afterwards into another
path, though where to go she had little idea, so long as it was out of
reach of my Lady and her prison.

Oh! if Harriet were only at Brentford, or if it were possible to reach
the Lea Farm where she was! Could she ask her way thither, or could
she find some shelter near or in Brentford till the coach or the waggon
started? This was the most definite idea her brain, refreshed somewhat
by the food, could form; but in the meantime she was again getting
bewildered in the field paths. It was a part she did not know, lying
between the backs of the cottages and their gardens, and the woods
belonging to the great house; and the long sloping meadows, spangled
with cowslips were much alike. The cowslips seemed to strike her with
a pang as she recollected her merry day among them last spring, and how
little she then thought of being a homeless wanderer. At last, scarce
knowing where she was, she sat down on the step of a stile leading to a
little farmyard, leant her head on