a man whom Anne knew,
and, instead of drawing to one side to pass, he reined in his horse as
if to speak. "Good morning, Miss Hilton," he said. Anne checked her
horse which had gone a few paces past, and turning in her seat to look
over her shoulder, answered his greeting. The farmer's horse, impatient
of this check on the way home, made several attempts to start, and at
last, being held in by his master and scolded loudly, fell to pawing the
ground with one foot. Having quieted his horse, the farmer also turned
in his seat, and looking back at Anne said:

"I've just been up to the Union with the milk, Miss Hilton. They've had
a death this morning. I thought I'd tell you."

"Not Jane Evans?" said Anne, dropping the reins, but the next moment
retaking them as the pony had started off.

"Yes, it's Jane," said the man. "The child's living. It's a boy. She's
to be buried to-morrow seemingly. They soon put you where they want you
when you go in there."

Anne, who had been living all morning with the dead whom she knew to be
dead, stared helplessly as she heard that one whom she believed to be
alive was dead also. She had meant to go to the Union to-morrow. She was
speechless.

"She had a drouth on her it seems, and couldn't drag herself up again,"
said the farmer.

Anne remembered the room with its blue-covered beds, and the fire
burning beneath the lithograph of Queen Victoria, and the girl sitting
beside it whom she could not reach by speaking, and who was now indeed
dead.

"You'll perhaps be going up?" said the farmer, as if to lay on someone
else the responsibility of knowing about it also.

"I'll go up this afternoon," returned Anne, picking up the whip and
flicking the pony. The farmer said "Good morning," and the rattle of
milk cans once more filled the road as his horse set off at a gallop
towards home.

CHAPTER XVIII

When the business of the market was done, and Anne reached the Union, it
was late in the afternoon. The roads outside the town were full of
farmers returning from the market, of women walking with empty baskets,
and an occasional small herd of cattle, being driven away from the
terrifying experience of the town, by a purchaser. It was visiting-day
at the Union, and here and there from the out-going stream, a man or
woman of middle-age turned aside to enter the gate of the big brick
building, in whose side-garden men were working, dressed in the
bottle-green corduroy of the institu