ed shrieked again, and
fell heavily to the stream below, from which Abel caught her up as if
she were a child, and carried her to the opposite side, and across the
rocky road to the house. As she lay on Sarah's bed, with Blossom working
over her, she began to scream anew, half unconsciously, in the voice of
frenzied terror with which she had cried out at the sound of the running
horse. Her face was grey, but around her mouth there was a blue circle
that made it look like the sunken mouth of an old woman, and her
eyes--in which that stark terror was still visible, as though it had
been rendered indelible by the violence of the shock that had called
it into being--seemed looking through the figures around her, with the
intense yet unseeing gaze with which one might look through shadows in
search of an object one does not find.

"Get the doctor at once, Abel," said Blossom, "Grandma says something
has happened to bring on Judy's time. Had you two been quarrelling?"

"Good God, no. Mr. Mullen's horse ran away with him and Judy saw it
before I could catch her. I don't know yet whether he is dead or alive."

"I saw him running bareheaded through the cornfield just as you brought
Judy in, and I wondered what was the matter. He was going after his
horse, I suppose."

"Well, he's done enough harm for one day. I'm off to Piping Tree for Dr.
Fairley."

But two hours later, when he returned, with the physician on horseback
at his side, Mr. Mullen's driving, like most earnest yet ignorant
endeavours, had already resulted in disaster. All night they worked
over Judy, who continued to stare through them, as though they were but
shadows which prevented her from seeing the object for which she was
looking. Then at sunrise, having brought a still-born child into the
world, she turned her face to the wall and passed out of it in search of
the adventure that she had missed.

CHAPTER XIII

WHAT LIFE TEACHES

Judy was laid away amid the low green ridges in the churchyard, where
the drowsy hum of the threshing in a wheatfield across the road, was the
only reminder of the serious business of life. And immediately, as
if the beneficent green had enveloped her memory, her weaknesses were
effaced and her virtues were exalted in the minds of the living. Their
judgment was softened by a vague feeling of awe, but they were not
troubled, while they stood in a solemn and curious row around her grave,
by any sense of the pathetic futi