ne half a mile he had
forgotten all about her, except that she was a woman who had sat down to
rest.

Mrs. Yeobright's exertions, physical and emotional, had well-nigh
prostrated her; but she continued to creep along in short stages with
long breaks between. The sun had now got far to the west of south and
stood directly in her face, like some merciless incendiary, brand in
hand, waiting to consume her. With the departure of the boy all visible
animation disappeared from the landscape, though the intermittent husky
notes of the male grasshoppers from every tuft of furze were enough to
show that amid the prostration of the larger animal species an unseen
insect world was busy in all the fullness of life.

In two hours she reached a slope about three-fourths the whole
distance from Alderworth to her own home, where a little patch of
shepherd's-thyme intruded upon the path; and she sat down upon the
perfumed mat it formed there. In front of her a colony of ants
had established a thoroughfare across the way, where they toiled a
never-ending and heavy-laden throng. To look down upon them was like
observing a city street from the top of a tower. She remembered
that this bustle of ants had been in progress for years at the same
spot--doubtless those of the old times were the ancestors of these which
walked there now. She leant back to obtain more thorough rest, and the
soft eastern portion of the sky was as great a relief to her eyes as the
thyme was to her head. While she looked a heron arose on that side of
the sky and flew on with his face towards the sun. He had come dripping
wet from some pool in the valleys, and as he flew the edges and lining
of his wings, his thighs and his breast were so caught by the bright
sunbeams that he appeared as if formed of burnished silver. Up in the
zenith where he was seemed a free and happy place, away from all contact
with the earthly ball to which she was pinioned; and she wished that she
could arise uncrushed from its surface and fly as he flew then.

But, being a mother, it was inevitable that she should soon cease to
ruminate upon her own condition. Had the track of her next thought been
marked by a streak in the air, like the path of a meteor, it would have
shown a direction contrary to the heron's, and have descended to the
eastward upon the roof of Clym's house.

7--The Tragic Meeting of Two Old Friends

He in the meantime had aroused himself from sleep, sat up, and l