I saw, through the
stable window of the inn where I was working, two black eyes staring in
just as they stared across the dying embers of the gipsy camp. I did not
scream, but I hid myself, and when they were gone away stole out and
got on the cars, and gave the man my last dollar--all the money I had
earned--for a ride to New York. I did not know any better. I knew he
never went to New York, and I thought I would be safe from him there. But
of the difference between the woods and a forest of brick and stone I
never thought; of night with no shelter but the wall of some blind alley;
of hunger in the sight of food, and wild beasts in the shape of men. I
didn't know where to go or who to speak to. If any one stared at me long,
I turned and ran away. I ran away once from a policeman. He thought me a
thief, and started to run after me. But people slipped in between us and
I got away. What happened next I don't know. Perhaps I was thrown down,
perhaps I fell. I had come a long way and I was tired. When I did know
anything, I was lying on my back in a narrow street, looking up at a tall
building that seemed to go right up into the sky like the great rocks I
had sometimes slept under when I was with the gipsies. Only there were
windows in the rock, out of which looked faces, and I got looking back
at one of these faces and the face looked at me, and I liked it and got
up on my knees and held up my arms, and the face drew back out of sight,
and I felt very sorry and cried and almost laid down again. I seemed so
alone and hurt and hungry. But the children--there were crowds of
children--wouldn't let me. They got in a ring and pulled at me, and some
one cried: 'Big cheeks is coming! Big cheeks will eat her up,' and I was
angry and got up on my feet. But I couldn't walk; I screamed when I tried
to, which frightened the children, and they all ran away. But I didn't
fall; an arm was round me, a good, kind arm, and though I didn't see the
face of the woman who helped, for she had her head wrapped up in an old
shawl, I felt that it was the same which had looked out of the window
at me, and went willingly enough when she began to draw me toward the
house and up the first flight of stairs, though I could hardly help
screaming every time my foot touched the ground. At the top of the first
flight I stopped; I could go no further. The woman heard me pant, and
pushing the covering from her eyes, she turned my face towards the light
and looked