There she closed the door she had left open and took the child. He lay in her arms like one dead. She removed everything he wore and dressed him in the garments she had been making for the last two weeks out of clothes of her own. When she was done he looked like any labourer’s child, and nothing in his face contradicted the appearance of his attire. She regarded the result for a moment with a triumph of satisfaction, laid him down, and proceeded to put away the clothes he had worn.

Over the top of the door was a small cupboard in the wall. She had never looked into it until the day before, when she opened it and found it empty. She placed a table under it and a chair on the table, climbed up, laid in it everything she had taken off the child, locked the door of it, put the key in her pocket, and got down. Then she took the cloak and hood he had till then always worn out-of-doors, laid them down beside the wardrobe, and lifting the end of it with a strength worthy of a blacksmith’s daughter, pushed them with her foot into the hollow between the bottom of the wardrobe and the floor of the room. This done, she looked at the clock on the mantel shelf, saw it was one o’clock, and sat down to recover her breath.

The next moment she was on her knees sobbing. By and by she rose, wiped the hot tears from her eyes, and went carefully about the room, gathering up this and that and putting them into her box. Having locked it, she stuffed a number of small pieces of paper into the lock, using a crochet needle to get them well into the works of it. Lastly, she put on a dress she had never worn at Mortgrange and picked up the child, who was still in a dead sleep. She wrapped him in an old shawl, and stole with him from the room.

Like those of a thief, her eyes looked this way and that as she crept to a narrow stair that led to the kitchen. She knew every turn and every opening in this part of the house, and for weeks had been occupied in her imagination with the daring idea she was now carrying out.

She reached the door that was most likely to offer her a safe exit, unlocked it quietly, and stood in a little paved yard from which another door in an ivy-covered wall opened into the kitchen garden. The moon shone large and clear, but the shadow of the house gave her cover. It was the month of August, warm and still. For the first time in her life she wished for darkness. Along the wall she stole, clinging to it for safety. Another door led into the shrubbery surrounding the cottage of the head gardener, from which a back road led to a gate to the highway. Along the road’s honest, unshadowed spaces she must then walk miles and miles before she could even begin to hope herself safe.