The road lay across an expanse of marshy country and approached the wooded uplands of her home only by numerous eccentric divagations made necessary by culverts that drained the marsh. The day was bright; the sky, so vast an arch over this flat land, was a very oven for heat; there were cracks in the earth, the grass was like stubble. At the mid journey they crossed a river by its wooden bridge, upon which a boy sat fishing with stick and string. Near the water was a long white hut with a flag; a few tethered boats floated upon the stream. Gerald gave a shilling to a travelling woman who carried a burden on her back and shuffled slowly upon the harsh road sighing, looking neither to right nor left; she did not look into the sky, her gaze was fastened upon her dolorous feet, one two, one two, one two; her shift, if she had such a garment, must have clung to her old body like a shrimping net.
In an hour they had reached the uplands and soon, at the top of a sylvan slope where there was shade and cooling air, Gerald saw a sign hung upon a sycamore tree, The Black Dog by Nathaniel Crabbe. The inn was small, pleasant with pink wash and brown paint, and faced across the road a large yard encircled by hedges, trees, and a gate. The travellers stood peeping into the enclosure which was stocked with new ladders, hurdles, and poles of various sizes. Amid them stood a tall burly man at a block, trimming with an axe the butt of a willow rod. He was about fifty, clad in rough country clothes, a white shirt, and a soft straw hat. He had mild simple features coloured, like his arms and neck, almost to the hue of a bay horse.
“Hullo!” called the girl. The man with the axe looked round at her unrecognizingly. Orianda hurried through the gateway. “Father!” she cried.
“I did not know. I was not rightly sure of ye,” said the man, dropping the axe, “such a lady you’ve grown.”
As he kissed his daughter his heavy discoloured hands rested on her shoulders, her gloved ones lay against his breast. Orianda took out her purse.
“Here is the money I stole, father.”
She dropped some coins one by one into his palm. He counted them over, and saying simply “Thank you, my dear,” put them into his pocket.
“I’m dashed!”—thought Loughlin, who had followed the girl—“it’s exactly how she would take it; no explanation, no apology. They do not know what reproach means. Have they no code at all?”
She went on chatting with her father, and seemed to have forgotten her companion.
“You mean you want to come back!” exclaimed her father eagerly, “come back here? That would be grand, that would. But look, tell me what I am to do. I’ve—you see—this is how it is—”