late panic: it might have been fancy altogether,
the effect of an over-tired brain; or, as the
impression had been so strong that she could not
quite overcome it by any attempts to refuse the
evidence of her senses, she persuaded herself
that what she could not deny she had seen and
heard was a dog, goat, or other animal, that her
footsteps had disturbed. So probable, indeed,
did this solution appear, that, her reason having
nothing to suggest to contradict it, she was fain
to reassure herself with such explanation, and,
turning her thoughts as well as steps forward,
she began once more to rehearse the dreaded
scene of confession to her mother, who was
utterly ignorant of the events that were so
suddenly to be brought before her, and whose alleged
illness had been, of course, merely a pretext to
make this escape.

By the time that the June morning was in its
waking flush, Jeanne had got so far on her way,
without immediately encountering any one, that
she now began to feel there was comparatively
little risk of detection. Still, she said to herself,
she must yet push on, and not think of wasting
a moment of the so precious morning hours.
But, ere she had got much further on her way,
she began to feel that she was not in a
condition to travel either very fast or very far, and
she reflected that it would be better to husband
her strength before fatigue overcame it, than to
put it all forth at once, and perhaps unfit herself
for the completion of her journey.

There was, she knew, not much further on, a
little wood, and she now resolved that there
should end her first stage. She could find shelter,
rest, and concealment among the trees, without
going far from the road, and this repose,
with some food, would, she hoped, quite recruit
her to continue her journey by two or three easy
stages, if she found she could not make the rest
of it in one. So she walked on bravely, keeping
a look-out for the little wood.

Suddenly a turn of the road brought her on a
party of men, women, and children, half gipsies,
half strollers, seated in a green spot by the highway,
round their fire. One or two of them looked
at her as she passed, but took no further notice,
and she continued her way till some hundred
yards further on, she perceived, sitting at the
loot of a tree, a woman whose general appearance
seemed to mark her as one of the party she
had iust left behind, but whose attitude of grief,
her body crouched together, her head bowed
down on her hands, might sufficiently account
for her thus isolating herself from the rest.

Hearing a footstep, she looked up, and showed
a dark face, still young, but marked with an
expression of despair so intense, so hopeless, and
at the same time, so sullen, that Jeanne's quiet
sense of compassion for her was tinged with a
touch of fear, and she instinctively shrank from
the long, fixed gaze with which the woman
followed her. After she had passed, she looked
back, and perceiving she was still the object of
the same uncomfortable scrutiny, a thousand
vague anxieties assailed her.

She tried to recal the face, to remember
where and how she could ever have seen it
before; but her memory entirely failed to bring
before her any previous association with it, and
fancying that the woman must have been
deceived by some mistaken identity, she tried to
dismiss the subject from her mind. Shortly
after, coming within sight of the wood where
she proposed to rest, the sense of approaching
relief turned her thoughts into another channel.

Turning from the road, she soon found a spot
that seemed perfectly suited to her purpose: a
couch of thick moss, hidden from the highway,
not alone by the intervening trees, but by a
bank, overshadowed by a great gnarled and
hollow oak, and further cooled and freshened by the
flow of a little brook. Here she sat down, bathed
her hot and dusty face and hands, and having
eaten some of the food she had brought with
her, and nursed her child, she settled herself for
repose. With the murmur of the brook and the
faint regular respiration of her infant in her ears,
the soft green light, with here and there a little
spot of blue heaven, or a white sailing cloud
passing before her upturned face, in her eyes,
the sense of all outward things became
confounded, and she fell into the first really
profound and dreamless sleep she had known for
many weeks.

Then there came, stealing along with cat-like
footfall and suspended breath, parting, with
strong but cautious hand, the flexile branches,
stopping by moments to look and listen, then
creeping on again, the woman with the terrible
face; far more terrible now from the feline
intensity of greedy purpose stamped in every tine
of it. A few more long, lithe, crawling steps
brought her beside the mother and child.

Noiselessly she stooped over them, pausing
and gazing, never for an instant relenting in her
purpose, but studying the best means to execute
it. The child lay clasped in the fold of the
mother's arm, and now to withdraw it without
disturbing her was at once the woman's desire
and difficulty. Plucking a stem of feather-grass,
she, with its fringed tip, touched the back of
Jeanne's hand, ready to drop and crouch behind
her, so that should the sleeper be so far
disturbed as to open her eyes, her tormentor might
not be visible. But, as the latter guessed, her
sleep was too profound for this, and she merely
twitched her hand, and then, on a repetition of
the application, threw out the arm on the ground
beside her, leaving the infant exposed.

In a second it was in the dark woman's grasp,
and she was up and away, one arm clasping it close
to her breast, the other hand ready to lay on its
mouth and still its cries, if it should attempt to
utter any; but it only started and murmured in
its sleep, and was quiet again.

The woman sped on without pausing an
instant till she came to a spot in the wood,
removed a considerable distance from where
Jeanne lay, but still only on the border,
her course having been nearly parallel to the
high road, though not visible from it. Here
she paused, and kneeling by a little spot where
the ground had been newly disturbed, though a