She did not see, for she did not look to see, a tiny show of a smile which spread itself over her companion’s face.  They drove on fast, till the bottom of the bay was left and they descended from the tableland, by Sam Doolittle’s, to the road which skirted the south side of Shahweetah.  Winthrop looked keenly as he passed at the old fields and hillsides.  They were uncultivated now; fallow lands and unmown grass pastures held the place of the waving harvests of grain and new-reaped stubblefields that used to be there in the old time.  The pastures grew rank, for there were even no cattle to feed them; and the fallows were grown with thistles and weeds.  But over what might have been desolate lay the soft warmth of the summer morning; and rank pasture and uncared fallow ground took varied rich and bright hues under the early sun’s rays.  Those rays had now waked the hilltops and sky and river, and were just tipping the woods and slopes of the lower ground.  By the bend meadow Winthrop drew in his horse again and looked fixedly.

“Does it seem pleasant to you?” he asked.

“How should it, Mr. Winthrop?” Elizabeth said coldly.

“Do you change your mind about wishing to be here?”

“No, not at all.  I might as well be here as anywhere.  I would rather —­ I have nowhere else to go.”

He made no comment, but drove on fast again, till he drew up once more at the old back door of the old house.  It seemed a part of the solitude, for nothing was stirring.  Elizabeth sat and watched Winthrop tie the horse; then he came and helped her out of the wagon.

“Lean on me,” said he.  “You are trembling all over.”

He put her arm within his, and led her up to the door and knocked.

“Karen is up —­ unless she has forgotten her old ways,” said Winthrop.  He knocked again.

A minute after, the door slowly opened its upper half, and Karen’s wrinkled face and white cap and red shortgown were before them.  Winthrop did not speak.  Karen looked in bewilderment; then her bewilderment changed into joy.

“Mr. Winthrop! —­ Governor!” —­

And her hand was stretched out, and clasped his in a long mute stringent clasp, which her eyes at least said was all she could do.

“How do you do, Karen?”

“I’m well —­ the Lord has kept me.  But you —­”

“I am well,” said Winthrop.  “Will you let us come in, Karen? —­ This lady has been up all night, and wants rest and refreshment.”

Karen looked suspiciously at ‘this lady,’ as she unbolted the lower half of the door and let them in; and again when Winthrop carefully placed her in a chair and then went off into the inner room for one which he knew was more easy, and made her change the first for it.

“And what have ye come up for now, governor?” she said, when she had watched them both, with an unsatisfied look upon her face and a tone of deep satisfaction coming out in her words.