s--a veritable old wheel of fortune. But she had to do something; and
the only thing to do was to walk. Making up her mind to the Somewhere
in front of her, she simply went ahead; for the afternoon was going and
the night was sure to come--a prospect that filled her with dread.

It is no wonder that Lot's wife looked back when she was well out on
the plain. Probably she wanted to see where she was going--so Janet
thought, as she trudged wearily along. Or possibly the poor woman
wanted to make sure that she was going _at all_; for when you are
walking always at the middle of things, and not coming to anything,
there is no progress. Janet thought--for she had to think
something--that she knew just how stationary Lot's wife felt when she
was turned into a pillar of salt. Possibly, if the truth were known,
Lot's wife desired to be turned into a pillar of salt--who can tell?
Janet, walking along so unrelated and ineffectual, rather fancied that
she herself might want to be turned into a salt-lick (she had passed
one all worn hollow as the stone of Mecca by the tongues of many
Pilgrims); because if she were such a thing she would not be so utterly
useless and foolish under the eye of heaven. But still she kept
trudging along, feeling the growing weight of the slicker in her arms,
for Janet was not much of a hand to carry anything on her shoulder.

Janet walked and walked, but her walking did not seem to have any
effect upon that endless land. The fence did not put in its
appearance, neither did a house nor a path, nor anything else which
would make it different from the sky-covered plain that it was. It
persisted in being itself, world without end, amen. To make matters
worse, her shoe began to hurt (she had suspected it would and taken the
man's promise that it would n't), and the more she persevered the more
it clamped her toe and wrung her heel and drew fire to her instep. But
there was nothing to do but walk; and she kept on with her footsteps
till the operation became monotonous. Still that roadless scene was
unmoved. The world was "round like an apple"; that she could plainly
see. And as to her feelings, this globe was just a big treadmill under
her aching feet.

The only escape from such tyranny is to rise superior to it,
withdrawing the mind from its service; so she decided to think of
something else. And now, as she went on with no company but her own
thoughts, she had a growing realization, more and