I was out
of temptation. There I could not be burned in that flame again. That was
all I thought of, to creep away where the fire could not reach me. And I
felt sure I should not live long. In my ignorance I thought the exposure
to all weathers, and privation, and the first frost of winter would
bring me my release quickly. But they did not. They gave me new life
instead. I came out in spring, and I begged my way to Abinger Forest,
and nearly starved there; but I did not mind. Have you ever been in
Abinger Forest in the spring when the wortleberry is out? Can the
Elysian fields of Asphodel be more beautiful? Perhaps to others they
might seem so; but not to me. My first glimpse of hope came to me in the
woods at Abinger in a windless, sunny week at Easter. The gipsies gave
me food once or twice. And I ate the scraps that the trippers left after
their picnics at the top of Leith Hill where the tower is. And I lay in
the sun by day and I slept in a stack of bracken by night, and my
strained life relaxed. And I, who had become so hard and bitter, saw at
last what endless love and compassion had been vainly lavished on me,
and I was humbled. I had somehow got it rooted into my warped mind that
I had been cruelly treated, betrayed, abandoned by my friends, by every
one. I had tried hard to forgive them, but I could not. I saw at last
that it was I who had been cruel, I who had betrayed, I who needed
forgiveness; and I asked it of the only Friend I had left, the only
Friend Who never forsakes us. And peace came back and the deep wound in
my life healed. It seemed as if Nature, who had forgotten me for so
long, had pity on me, and took me again to her heart. For I had loved
her years ago, before my husband died.

"When the weather broke, I took to the road, and the road has given me
back my health, and much more than health. I can see beauty again now.
And there is always beauty in the hedgerow; and wherever the road runs
there is beauty. In the open down, beside the tidal rivers with their
brown sails creeping among the buttercups, everywhere there is beauty.
And I can sleep again now. I learnt how to sleep at Abinger. I had
forgotten how it was done without morphia. O God! I can sleep, every
night, anywhere. It's worth being a tramp for that alone, to be able to
sleep naturally, to know in the daytime that you will have it at night,
and then to lie down and feel it stealing over you like the blessing of
God. I used to wake m