Not a word more concerning their differences passed between her and Miss Dasomma. They talked cheerfully and kissed as usual when parting for the night.

The moment she was in her room, Amy began to pack a small carpetbag. When that was done she made a bundle of her cloak and shawl and then lay down in her clothes. Long before dawn she crept softly down the stairs, and sneaked out.

Thus for the second time she was a fugitive—the first time from, now to.

When Miss Dasomma had been up for some time the next morning, she went up to see why Amy was making no appearance. One glance around the room told her that she was gone. At first she was dreadfully anxious, not suspecting where she had gone, thinking that perhaps the letter which had made her so miserable contained the announcement that their marriage was not a genuine one. If so, then in the dignity of her true heart, she must have at once forever taken her leave of Cornelius.

She wrote to Hester, but the post did not leave before evening, and would not arrive until the afternoon of the next day.

When Amy got to the station she found she was in time for the first train of the day. There was no third class on it, but she found she had enough money for a second-class ticket, and without a moment’s hesitation, though it left her almost penniless, she took one.

—Forty-Four —

The Sick Room

At Yrndale things went on in the same dull way, anger burrowing like a devil-mole in the bosom of the father, a dreary spiritual fog hanging over all the souls, and the mother wearying for some glimmer of a heavenly dawn. Hester felt as if she could not endure it much longer.

But there was one bright spot in the house yet—Mark’s room, where the major sat by the bedside of the boy, reading, telling him stories, or now and then listening to him as he spoke childlike wisdom in childish words. Saffy came and went, by no means so merry now. In Mark’s room she would at times be her old self again, but nowhere else. Infected by Corney, she had begun to be afraid of her father, and like him watched to keep out of his way. What seemed to add to the misery, though in reality it operated the other way, was that the weather had again put on a wintry temper. Sleet and hail, and even snow fell, alternated with rain and wind, day after day for a week.

One afternoon the wind rose almost to a tempest. The rain drove in sheets, beating unmercifully against the windows of Mark’s room. His was a cheerful room, though low-pitched and very old, with a great beam across the middle of it. There were coloured prints, mostly of Scripture subjects, on the walls; and the beautiful fire burning in the grate shone on them and reflected from the polished floor. The major sat by it in his easy chair. A bedroom had been prepared for him next to the boy’s, and Mark had a string close to his hand whose slightest pull rang a little bell that woke the major like a cannon on the field of battle.