nature.  He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish—­perhaps a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing shame, understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life’s bitterness.

Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear with a despairing human sob.  No wonder man’s religion has much sorrow in it:  no wonder he needs a suffering God.

Hetty, in her red cloak and warm bonnet, with her basket in her hand, is turning towards a gate by the side of the Treddleston road, but not that she may have a more lingering enjoyment of the sunshine and think with hope of the long unfolding year.  She hardly knows that the sun is shining; and for weeks, now, when she has hoped at all, it has been for something at which she herself trembles and shudders.  She only wants to be out of the high-road, that she may walk slowly and not care how her face looks, as she dwells on wretched thoughts; and through this gate she can get into a field-path behind the wide thick hedgerows.  Her great dark eyes wander blankly over the fields like the eyes of one who is desolate, homeless, unloved, not the promised bride of a brave tender man.  But there are no tears in them:  her tears were all wept away in the weary night, before she went to sleep.  At the next stile the pathway branches off:  there are two roads before her—­one along by the hedgerow, which will by and by lead her into the road again, the other across the fields, which will take her much farther out of the way into the Scantlands, low shrouded pastures where she will see nobody.  She chooses this and begins to walk a little faster, as if she had suddenly thought of an object towards which it was worth while to hasten.  Soon she is in the Scantlands, where the grassy land slopes gradually downwards, and she leaves the level ground to follow the slope.  Farther on there is a clump of trees on the low ground, and she is making her way towards it.  No, it is not a clump of trees, but a dark shrouded pool, so full with the wintry rains that the under boughs of the elder-bushes lie low beneath the water.  She sits down on the grassy bank, against the stooping stem of the great oak that hangs over the dark pool.  She has thought of this pool often in the nights of the month that has just gone by, and now at last she is come to see it.  She clasps her hands round her knees, and leans forward, and looks earnestly at it, as if trying to guess what sort of bed it would make for her young round limbs.

No, she has not courage to jump into that cold watery bed, and if she had, they might find her—­they might find out why she had drowned herself.  There is but one thing left to her:  she must go away, go where they can’t find her.