Evan lingered behind her till he saw her body sway, and in a fit of trembling she half fell on his outstretched arm.  He led her to the stone, not knowing what on earth to do with her.  There was no sign of a house near; they were quite solitary; to all his questions she gave an unintelligible moan.  He had not the heart to leave her, so, taking a sharp seat on a heap of flints, thus possibly furnishing future occupation for one of his craftsmen, he waited, and amused himself by marking out diagrams with his stick in the thick dust.

His thoughts were far away, when he heard, faintly uttered: 

‘Why do you stop here?’

‘To help you.’

‘Please don’t.  Let me be.  I can’t be helped.’

‘My good creature,’ said Evan, ’it ’s quite impossible that I should leave you in this state.  Tell me where you were going when your illness seized you?’

‘I was going,’ she commenced vacantly, ‘to the sea—­the water,’ she added, with a shivering lip.

The foolish youth asked her if she could be cold on such a night.

‘No, I’m not cold,’ she replied, drawing closer over her lap the ends of a shawl which would in that period have been thought rather gaudy for her station.

‘You were going to Lymport?’

‘Yes,—­Lymport’s nearest, I think.’

‘And why were you out travelling at this hour?’

She dropped her head, and began rocking to right and left.

While they talked the noise of waggon-wheels was heard approaching.  Evan went into the middle of the road, and beheld a covered waggon, and a fellow whom he advanced to meet, plodding a little to the rear of the horses.  He proved kindly.  He was a farmer’s man, he said, and was at that moment employed in removing the furniture of the farmer’s son, who had failed as a corn-chandler in Lymport, to Hillford, which he expected to reach about morn.  He answered Evan’s request that he would afford the young woman conveyance as far as Fallowfield: 

‘Tak’ her in?  That I will.

‘She won’t hurt the harses,’ he pursued, pointing his whip at the vehicle:  ‘there’s my mate, Gearge Stoakes, he’s in there, snorin’ his turn.  Can’t you hear ‘n asnorin’ thraugh the wheels?  I can; I’ve been laughin’!  He do snore that loud-Gearge do!’

Proceeding to inform Evan how George Stokes had snored in that characteristic manner from boyhood, ever since he and George had slept in a hayloft together; and how he, kept wakeful and driven to distraction by George Stokes’ nose, had been occasionally compelled, in sheer self-defence, madly to start up and hold that pertinacious alarum in tight compression between thumb and forefinger; and how George Stokes, thus severely handled, had burst his hold with a tremendous snort, as big as a bull, and had invariably uttered the exclamation, ’Hulloa!—­same to you, my lad!’ and rolled over to snore as fresh as ever;—­all this with singular rustic comparisons, racy of the soil, and in raw Hampshire dialect, the waggoner came to a halt opposite the stone, and, while Evan strode to assist the girl, addressed himself to the great task of arousing the sturdy sleeper and quieting his trumpet, heard by all ears now that the accompaniment of the wheels was at an end.