answer him or look at him. At any other moment she
would have been afraid of him; now she feared nothing but the image in
her own mind--herself led along the village street, enclosed in that
hateful building, cut off from all pleasure, all free moving and
willing--alone and despised--her children taken from her.

Suddenly she walked into the back kitchen and opened the door leading
to the garden.

Outside everything lay swathed in white, and a snowstorm was drifting
over the deep cup of land which held the village. A dull, melancholy
moonlight seemed to be somewhere behind the snow curtain, for the
muffled shapes of the houses below and the long sweep of the hill were
visible through the dark, and the objects in the little garden itself
were almost distinct. There, in the centre, rose the round, stone
edging of the well, the copious well, sunk deep into the chalk, for
which Bessie's neighbours envied her, whence her good nature let them
draw freely at any time of drought. On either side of it the gnarled
stems of old fruit-trees and the bare sticks of winter kail made black
scratches and blots upon the white.

Bessie looked out, leaning against the doorway, and heedless of the
wind that drove upon her. Down below there was a light in Watson's
cottage, and a few lights from the main street beyond pierced the
darkness. The Spotted Deer must be at that moment full of people, all
talking of her and Isaac. Her eye came hastily back to the
snow-shrouded well and dwelt upon it.

"Shut that door!" Isaac commanded from inside. She obeyed, and came
back into the kitchen. There she moved restlessly about a minute or
two, followed by his frowning look--the look, not of a husband, but of
an enemy. Then a sudden animal yearning for rest and warmth seized
her. She opened the door by the hearth abruptly and went up, longing
simply to lie down and cover herself from the cold.

But, after all, she turned aside to the children, and sat there for
some time at the foot of the little boys' bed. The children,
especially Arthur, had been restless for long, kept awake and trembling
by the strange sounds outside their door and the loud voices
downstairs; but, with the deep silence that had suddenly fallen on the
house after Isaac had gone away to seek his interview with Watson,
sleep had come to them, and even Arthur, on whose thin cheeks the
smears left by crying were still visible, was quite unconscious of his
mother. She lo