There was no driver in sight, but she did not hesitate to take her seat inside.  There was extra business at the station, for this was the first train to come in for two days; and if anyone noticed her in the shadowy recesses of the cumbrous old coach, nobody approached her; nor was she in any way disturbed.  When the driver did show himself, she was almost asleep, but she woke up quickly enough when his good-natured face peered in at her and she heard him ask where she wanted to go and whether she had any baggage.

“I want to go up Long Hill and be set down at the first cross-road,” she said.  “My baggage is here.”  And she pointed to the space at her feet.  But that space was empty; she had no baggage.  She had dropped both bag and umbrella at the side of the road after one of her long climbs under a fitful moon and had not so much as thought of them since.

Now she remembered and flushed as she met the eyes of the man looking in at her with his hand on his whiskers, smoothing them thoughtfully down but saying nothing, though his countenance and expression showed him to be one of the loquacious sort.  If any smiles remained to her from the old days, now was the time for one; but before she could twist her dry lips into any such attempt, he had uttered a cheerful “All right” and turned away to clamber up into his seat.

The relief was great, and she settled back, rejoicing in the fact that they would soon be moving and that she was likely to be the sole passenger.  But she soon came to rue this fact, for the driver wanted to talk and even made many abortive attempts that way.  But she could not fall in with his mood, and seeing this, he soon withheld all remarks and bent his full energies to the task of urging his horses up the interminable incline.

Houses, at which she scarcely looked, disappeared gradually from view, and groups of spreading trees and patches of upland took their places, deepening into the forest as they advanced.  When halfway up, the farther mountains, which had hitherto been hidden by nearer hills, burst into view.  Behind them the sun was setting, and the scene was glorious.  If she saw it at all, she gave no sign of pleasure or even of admiration.  Her head, which she had held straight up for the first quarter of a mile, sank lower and lower as they clambered on; yet she gave no signs of drowsiness—­only of a mortal weariness which seemed to attack the very springs of life.  The pomp and pageantry of the heavens, burning with all the pigments of the rainbow, failed to appeal to a soul shut within dungeon bars.  Rocks and mighty gorges darkling to the eye and stirring to the imagination held no story for her; she looked neither to the right nor to the left while the beauty lasted, much less when the last gleam had faded from the mountain tops and a troop of leaden clouds, coming up from the east, added their shadows to those of premature night.

The driver, who had been eying these clouds for some little time, felt that he ought to speak if she did not.  Pulling up his horses as though to give them a breathing spell, he remarked over his shoulder with a strain of anxiety in his voice: