A carriage is waiting for them, and Rylton, putting her into it, goes away to see to their luggage. Tita, sitting drearily within, her heart sad with recollections of the past, is suddenly struck by a sound that comes to her through the shut windows of the carriage. She opens the one nearest to her and listens.
It is only a poor vagrant on the pavement without, singing for a penny or two. But the song goes to her very heart:
"It's hame, and its hame—hame fain wad I be,
O! hame, hame, hame, to my ain countree."
A sob rises in her throat. So near to her own dear home, and yet so far. She finds her purse, and hastily flings half a crown to the poor wretch outside, who never guesses why she got so large a dole.
And now Rylton returns. He gets in. The carriage drives away through the well-remembered town, over the old bridge, and into the sweetness of the sleeping country.
Already the stars are out. Through the warm bank of dying sunset over there a pale little dot is glimmering. Steel-gray are the heavens, fast deepening into darkest blue, and over the hills, far, far away, the faint suggestion of a "young May moon" is growing. A last faint twittering of birds is in the air, and now it ceases, and darkness falls and grows, and shadows fill the land and hide the edges of the moors, and blacken the sides of the walls as they drive past them.
Tita is always peering out of the window. At a sudden turn in the road she draws back as if hurt.
"This is the turn to Oakdean!" says she sharply.
"Yes; we are going this road."
"It must be near, then, this new place—quite near?"