‘It’s a long way down to that-there place, and the Knobs are a jolty way to go,’ she said. ‘Not once but ten times! I wish I had a blue hat with a big white ostrich plume a-flyen for myself. Me a-sitten up in a buggy with a big white plume on my hat and white slippers on my feet.’ She was marching steadily ahead now on a long level stretch. ‘A dog barks curious,’ she said again, ‘curious now. He can go two ways at once, a yelp out and a growl down under. A growl goes on down, under the bark. A dog knows as soon as a body sets a foot on the road. But I can tell whe’r it’s a big dog or a little by the sort of bark he lets out. A house back in a bunch of trees is a pretty sight now, for certain.’

A little church was set back among beech trees, the red bricks holding their colour in the spaces where the moonlight spread through the open boughs. Behind the church a gay little graveyard twinkled in the light, its gay white stones and blossoming flowers as happy as a flower bed out in the sun. The windows of the church were dark and there was no house near, and Ellen decided to rest awhile in the recess of the doorway. She lay on the floor of the vestibule where a smell of dusty boots arose from the boards. She put on her shoes and stockings to warm her feet, and presently she knew that she had been sleeping long, for the moon had set and the land seemed very dark. The road was grey-brown in the shadows and dull grey in the open; beyond lay blackness in the fields. A short distance from the church she hid close to a gate while two horsemen passed. They stopped to drink from a bottle and one of the horses knew of her hiding for it nickered uneasily.

‘Glory to God, I feel like hell!’ one of the men declaimed slowly, gesturing in a deep passion of joy and sorrow undefined.

They whipped their horses and rode away quickly. Ellen walked fast after that, giving her attention to her journey and fearing that she had wasted time. But when the hills unfolded, curve on curve, up and down, past black nothingness, past white-fenced yards, past white barns, past black nothingness again, her steps lagged and she grew tired. Two miles or more beyond the church she came to an iron bridge over a little river. The road lay along a high curving embankment, and so she saw the bridge before she reached it. The iron frame hung between the banks of trees, a black spider web crisscrossing in the air. It was somehow beautiful, the dark bridge hanging between the dark trees, and she walked around the curve of the road and entered the bridge with awe in her mind, her mind so heavy with wonder that her feet dragged and little prickers of pain pushed in upon her face and chest. The water lay below, a dull silver black, and there were stars in it. ‘Oh, I didn’t know this-here would be!’ she said.