“Forgive me, snow-child,” she whispered, going close to Nancy.  “I’m a beast.  Isn’t it queer to be conscious, now and then, of the beast in you?”

“Please don’t, Joan, dear.  Please don’t talk and act so.”  Nancy’s eyes were blinded by tears.

“Very well, then, I will be good.”  Joan flung herself in a chair and presently asked curiously: 

“Nan, what are you going to do when you’ve done all the things down here millions of times?”

“There will always be new duties,” Nancy ventured.

“Duties!  Oh!  Nan, surely you’re too young to play with duties—­you’ll hurt yourself.”  The mockery again entered in.

Just then Jed stumbled into the room with an armful of wood.  His bleared eyes clung to Nancy’s face and he nearly fell over a rug.

When he went out Joan seemed to follow him.  She spoke musingly as if voicing her thoughts: 

“It’s terrible for anything as old as that to be running around,” she said.  “It isn’t decent.  He ought to be tucked up in his nice little grave.  He looks as if he’d been forgotten.”

“Joan, you are wicked—­you make me afraid!” Nancy came from the loom and crouched by Joan.

“Snow-child, again forgive me!” Joan bent and drew Nancy’s fair head to her knee.  “But oh!  I am so—­so utterly lost.”

“Joan, what is it?  What is the matter?”

“I don’t know, Nan.”  Joan was looking into the fire—­seeking; seeking.  “Things that quiet you and Aunt Dorrie just drive me on to the rocks.  I feel as if I’d be wrecked if I didn’t steer well out into the open.  And when I get as far as that, I know that I couldn’t find my way out even if—­if everything let go of me.  I suppose I would sink.  This isn’t my place, Nan, but I don’t know where my place is!  I feel sure I have a place, everyone has—­but where is mine?”

There was desperation in the words, the desperation of helpless youth.  No perspective, no light or shade, but terrible vision.

“Joan, darling, why can you not wait until you see the way?” Nancy was prepared now for battle.

“That’s it, Nan.  I can’t.  All I can do is to push off the rocks—­then I’ll have to sink or swim.  This is killing me!”

Joan flung her head back as if she were choking.

And just then Mary came into the room.

A gray shawl, home-spun—­it was made from the wool of Mary’s own sheep—­was clutched over her thin body; a huge quilted hood—­Mary herself had quilted it—­half hid her dark, expressionless face.

“I met the postman,” she announced, “as I came along.  He give me this!”

Mary held a letter out to Joan and passed from the room.

The moment, while Joan glanced at the letter, had power to grip Nancy’s imagination and fill it with a vision.

As sure as she ever saw anything, she saw Joan going away!  Going away as she had never gone before.  Going to a Far Country.