She harnessed the pony to the cart, and stowed her baskets safely under the seat.  She was dressed in a purple merino skirt, kilted thickly, a black mantle, with a bead fringe, and an antiquated straw bonnet.  Round her neck she had folded a man’s linen handkerchief, and she had elastic-sided boots on her feet.  She locked the door, and put the keys in her linen pocket tied round her waist under her skirt, and climbing up by means of the wheel, seated herself on the board which did duty as a seat, and took the reins.  “Go on, Polly!” she said, and the pony, with a good deal of tossing of head and tail, set off obediently towards the high road.  The clacking of its feet as it trotted on the hard road overwhelmed all other sounds.  At the corner of the roads an old woman tending a cow nodded to her, and one or two field labourers raised themselves to see who was going past, remaining upright and staring longer than was necessary to satisfy their curiosity.  At an open field-gate she had to wait until two heavy wagons, their wheels a mass of red, soft earth, had emerged, and turned in the direction of the town.  She passed them, and for some time met no one.  An advancing cart soon came in sight, accompanied by a great jangling of cans—­a milk-cart returning from the station, having sent off its supplies to the town, now bringing back its empty cans.  It was driven by 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.