and presently forced it beneath the bronze-leafed, drooping boughs of a sycamore.  Here she left the boat, tying it to the tree, and hoping that it was well hidden.  The great fear at her heart was that, when she was missed, Hugon would undertake to follow and to find her.  He had the skill to do so.  Perhaps, after many days, when she was in sight of the mountains, she might turn her head and, in that lonely land, see him coming toward her.

The sun was shining, and the woods were gay above her head and gay beneath her feet.  When the wind blew, the colored leaves went before it like flights of birds.  She was hungry, and as she walked she ate a piece of bread taken from the glebe-house larder.  It was her plan to go rapidly through the settled country, keeping as far as possible to the great spaces of woodland which the axe had left untouched; sleeping in such dark and hidden hollows as she could find; begging food only when she must, and then from poor folk who would not stay her or be overcurious about her business.  As she went on, the houses, she knew, would be farther and farther apart; the time would soon arrive when she might walk half a day and see never a clearing in the deep woods.  Then the hills would rise about her, and far, far off she might see the mountains, fixed, cloudlike, serene, and still, beyond the miles of rustling forest.  There would be no more great houses, built for ladies and gentlemen, but here and there, at far distances, rude cabins, dwelt in by kind and simple folk.  At such a home, when the mountains had taken on a deeper blue, when the streams were narrow and the level land only a memory, she would pause, would ask if she might stay.  What work was wanted she would do.  Perhaps there would be children, or a young girl like Molly, or a kind woman like Mistress Stagg; and perhaps, after a long, long while, it would grow to seem to her like that other cabin.

These were her rose-colored visions.  At other times a terror took her by the shoulders, holding her until her face whitened and her eyes grew wide and dark.  The way was long and the leaves were falling fast, and she thought that it might be true that in this world into which she had awakened there was for her no home.  The cold would come, and she might have no bread, and for all her wandering find none to take her in.  In those forests of the west the wolves ran in packs, and the Indians burned and wasted.  Some bitter night-time she would die....  Watching the sky from Fair View windows, perhaps he might idly mark a falling star.

All that day she walked, keeping as far as was possible to the woods, but forced now and again to traverse open fields and long stretches of sunny road.  If she saw any one coming, she hid in the roadside bushes, or, if that could not be done, walked steadily onward, with her head bent and her heart beating fast.  It must have been a day for minding one’s own business, for none stayed or questioned her.  Her