“Bart,” she whispered.  Then a little louder, “Bart—­Bart Toyner.”

The one thing that she wanted just then was to be alone, and of all people in the world Toyner was the man whom she least wanted to meet.  Yet she called him.  She got out of the window and took a few paces on one side and on the other in the darkness, still calling his name in a voice of soft entreaty.  In his old drunken days she had scorned him.  She scorned him now more than ever, but she still believed that her call would never reach his ear in vain.  In this hour of her extremity she must make sure of his absence by running the risk of having to endure his nearer presence.  When she knew that he was not there, she took a bundle from inside the room, shut down the window through which she had escaped, and wrapping her head and hands in a thin black shawl such as Indian women drape themselves with, she sped off over the dark grass to the river.

Overhead, the stars sparkled in a sky that seemed almost black.  The houses and trees, the thick scrubby bushes and long grass, were just visible in all the shades of monochrome that night produces.

In a few minutes she was beyond all the houses, gliding through a wood by the river.  The trees were high and black, and there was a faint musical sound of wind in them.  She heard it as she heard everything.  More than once she stopped, not fearful, but watching.  She must have looked like the spirit of primeval silence as she stood at such moments, lifting her shawl from her head to listen; then she went on.  She knew where a boat had by chance been left that day; it was a small rough boat, lying close under the roots of a pine tree, and tied to its trunk.  In this she bestowed her bundle, and untying the string, pushed from the shore.  She could hardly see the opposite side of the little Ahwewee in the darkness; she rowed at once into the midst of its rapid current; once there, she dipped her oars to steer rather than to propel.  She travelled swiftly with the black stream.

For half an hour or more she was only intent upon steering her boat.  Then, when she had come about three miles from the falls, she was in still water, and began rowing with all her strength to make the boat shoot forward as rapidly as before.

The water was as still now as if the river had widened and deepened into an inland sea; yet in the darkness to all appearance the river was as narrow, the outline of the trees on either side appearing black and high just within sight.  When the moon rose this mystery of nature was revealed, for the river was a lake, spreading far and wide on either side.  The lake was caused by dams built farther down the stream, and the forest that had covered the ground before still reared itself above the water, the bare dead trees standing thick, except in the narrow, winding passage of the original stream.