g; but she did not think of Sammy again till she
went to bed. Then, however, she was seized anew with the dread of
losing him for ever, and cried helplessly until she fell asleep.

For days she mourned for him without daring to go to the window, lest
she should see him pass by on the other side of the road with scorn
and contempt flashing forth from his innocent blue eyes. In the
evening, however, she opened the back-gate, as usual, and waited in
the wood-house; but he never came. And at first she was in despair.
Then she became defiant--she didn't care, not she! Then she grew
determined. He'd have to come back if she chose, she'd make him. But
how? Oh, she knew! She'd just sit still till something came.

She was sitting on a heap of beech branches opposite the doorway,
picking off the bronze buds and biting them. The blanched skeleton of
Sammy's whiting, sad relic of happier moments, grinned up at her from
the earthen floor. Outside, the old pear-tree on the left, leafless
now and motionless, showed distinctly in silhouette against the
night-sky. Its bare branches made black bars on the face of the bright
white moon which was rising behind it. What a strange thing time is!
day and night, day and night, week and month, spring, summer, autumn,
winter, always coming and going again, while we only come once, go,
and return no more. It was getting on for Christmas now. Another year
had nearly gone. The years slip away steadily--day by day--winter,
spring. Winter so cold and wet; March all clouds and dust--comes in
like a lion, goes out like a lamb; then April is bright.

The year slips away steadily; slips round the steady year; days come
and go--no, no! Days dawn and disappear, winters and springs--springs,
rings, sings? No, leave that. Winter with cold and rain--pain? March
storms and clouds and pain, till April once again light with it
brings.

Beth jumped down from the beech boughs, ran round to the old wooden
pump, clambered up by it on to the back-kitchen roof, and made for the
acting-room window. It was open, and she screwed herself in round the
bar and fastened the door. It was quite dark under the sloping roof,
but she found the end of a tallow candle, smuggled up there for the
purpose, lighted it, and stuck it on to the top of the rough deal box
which formed her writing-table. She had a pencil, sundry old envelopes
carefully cut open so as to save as much of the clean space inside as
possible, margins of newsp