The Woodlanders

It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily renewed its fall.

As she heard no more of Winterborne, she concluded that he had gone

away to his daily work, and forgotten that he had promised to accompany

her to Sherton; an erroneous conclusion, for he remained all day, by

force of his condition, within fifty yards of where she was. The

morning wore on; and in her doubt when to start, and how to travel, she

lingered yet, keeping the door carefully bolted, lest an intruder

should discover her. Locked in this place, she was comparatively safe,

at any rate, and doubted if she would be safe elsewhere.

The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled by the shade and

drip of the leafage. Autumn, this year, was coming in with rains.

Gazing, in her enforced idleness, from the one window of the

living-room, she could see various small members of the animal

community that lived unmolested there--creatures of hair, fluff, and

scale, the toothed kind and the billed kind; underground creatures,

jointed and ringed--circumambulating the hut, under the impression

that, Giles having gone away, nobody was there; and eying it

inquisitively with a view to winter-quarters. Watching these

neighbors, who knew neither law nor sin, distracted her a little from

her trouble; and she managed to while away some portion of the

afternoon by putting Giles's home in order and making little

improvements which she deemed that he would value when she was gone.

Once or twice she fancied that she heard a faint noise amid the trees,

resembling a cough; but as it never came any nearer she concluded that

it was a squirrel or a bird.

At last the daylight lessened, and she made up a larger fire for the

evenings were chilly. As soon as it was too dark--which was

comparatively early--to discern the human countenance in this place of

shadows, there came to the window to her great delight, a tapping which

she knew from its method to be Giles's.

She opened the casement instantly, and put out her hand to him, though

she could only just perceive his outline. He clasped her fingers, and

she noticed the heat of his palm and its shakiness.

"He has been walking fast, in order to get here quickly," she thought.

How could she know that he had just crawled out from the straw of the

shelter hard by; and that the heat of his hand was feverishness?

"My dear, good Giles!" she burst out, impulsively.

"Anybody would have done it for you," replied Winterborne, with as much

matter-of-fact as he could summon.