The rain ceased the next day, but the clouds did not vanish. Their folds, dense, opaque, impalpable, filled the vastness. The landscape was lost in their midst. The horizon had vanished. Distance was annihilated.
Only a yard or so of the path was seen by Dorinda, as she plodded along through the white vagueness that had absorbed the familiar world. And yet for all essentials she saw quite enough; in her ignorant fashion she deduced the moral, that if the few immediate steps before the eye are taken aright, the long lengths of the future will bring you at last where you would wish to be.
The reflection sustained her in some sort as she went. She was reluctant to acknowledge it even to herself; but she had a terrible fear that she had imposed a test that Rick would not endure.
'Ef he air so powerful jealous ez that, ter not holp another man a leetle bit, when he knows it can't hurt him none, he air jes' selfish, an' nuthin' shorter.'
She paused, looking about her mechanically. The few blackberry bushes, almost leafless, stretching out on either hand, were indistinct in the mist, and against the dense vapour they had the meagre effect of a hasty sketch on a white paper. The trees overhung her, she knew, in the invisible heights above; she heard the moisture dripping monotonously from their leaves. It was a dreary sound as it invaded the solemn stillness of the air.
'An' I'm boun' ter try ter holp him, ef I kin. I know too much, sence Rick spoke las' night, ter let me set an' fold my hands in peace. 'Pears like ter me ez that thar air all the diff'ence 'twixt humans an' the beastis, ter holp one another some. An' ef a human won't, 'pears like ter me ez the Lord hev wasted a soul on that critter.'
Despite her logic she stood still; her blue eyes were surcharged with shadows as they wistfully turned upward to the sad and sheeted day; her lips were grave and pathetic; her blue dress had gleams of moisture here and there, and a plaid woollen shawl, faded to the faintest hues, was drawn over her dense black hair. She stood and hesitated. She thought of the man she loved, and she thought of the word she denied the man in prison. Poor Dorinda! to hold the scales of justice unblinded.
'I dunno what ails me ter be 'feared he won't kem!' she said, striving to reassure herself; 'an' ennyhow'—she remembered the few immediate steps before her taken aright, and went along down the clouded, curtained path that was itself an allegory of the future.
The justice's gate loomed up like fate—the poor little palings to be the journey's end of hope or despair! A pig, without any appreciation of its subtler significance, had in his frequent wallowings at its base impaired in a measure its stability. He grunted at the sound of a footfall, as if to warn the new-comer that she might step on him. Dorinda took heed of the imperative caution, opened the gate gingerly, and it only grazed his back. He grunted again, whether in meagre, surly approval, or reproof that she had come at all, was hardly to be discriminated in his gruff, disaffected tone.
She noticed that the locust leaves, first of all to show the changing season, were yellow on the ground; a half-denuded limb was visible in the haze. There were late red roses, widely a-bloom, by the doorstep of the justice's house—a large double cabin of hewn logs, with a frame-inclosed passage between the two rooms. There was glass in the windows, for the justice was a man of some means for these parts; and she saw behind one of the tiny panes his bald polished head and his silver-rimmed spectacles gleaming in animated curiosity. He came limping, with the assistance of a heavy cane, to the door.