Not Under the Law

by Grace Livingston Hill

She had passed into quite another section of the city now, and trolleys were coming and going and plenty of people on the streets. She boarded one of the cars and rode until it came to a railroad station where she got off and went in. There was a restaurant here where she could get a glass of milk, and there was a rest room where she might tidy herself and sit down and get her bearings. She would study the time-tables and find out where to go intelligently. This running away hit or miss might only lead her in a circle and bring her back home before night.

So she went in and asked some questions, finally buying a ticket to a small town about a hundred miles away. Half an hour later, she boarded the train, having added to her crackers and cheese, an orange and a couple of bananas for lunch.

It was a way train and slow, and Joyce curled up in her seat and had a good, long nap, then woke to eat her lunch and sleep again. She had thought to plan out a campaign for herself, make some definite outline in her mind of what she would do with the future so suddenly opened out before her, but sleep simply dropped down upon her and took possession. The strain under which she had been, the sudden sharp emotions following one upon the other had stretched her endurance almost to the breaking point and relaxation brought such utter weariness that she could not even think.

Something was the matter with the engine and they stayed on a side track for a long time while men rushed about shouting to one another and doing things to the engine and now and again seemingly to the machinery underneath the cars, but it all made no impression on Joyce. She slept on, curled into a slim little heap in her seat. After a long time a train came by from the other direction, bringing aid perhaps, for it halted, and then there were more poundings and shoutings, and at last the train went on and Joyce’s train groaned and creaked and took up its limping way, lumbering slowly on like a person on crutches. About the middle of the afternoon, they came to a halt, and Joyce, sitting up suddenly warned by some inner consciousness, perceived she had arrived at the place she had aimed for, and got out quickly.

She had been told in the city that there would be an electric connection with another city, and sure enough, there stood a rickety old trolley in which she embarked, the only passenger for more than half the way.

Half an hour’s ride brought her through a lovely rolling country, past country clubs, and estates, and into the real farming district again, then more country clubs, and scattering bungalows and cottages, till it seemed evident that she was on the outskirts of a new suburb of the city that was just being developed.

It might have been the pretty little church, covered with vines and wearing the air of having been there before the bungalows came, that gave her the sudden impulse, or perhaps it was the well kept hedges and the general atmosphere of hominess that pervaded the pleasant streets. She decided to get out and see the place. She was tired of travel in the stuffy, rickety old car, and at least she could get into another car after she had walked a while if she found no place that seemed livable.

She got out and followed down a pleasant shaded street of homes, at first drinking in the beauty of the well kept lawns and newly painted gardens and hedge rows, turning corners and admiring bits of stone dwellings, bungalows, all on one floor with charming variance of rough stone pillars and porches. Turning two or three corners thus, she came upon what seemed to be a large estate, an old stone house far back from the road almost hidden by wonderful trees and dense, clustering shrubbery. It had the air of having been a fine old house of a time past, probably the original estate from which the whole town had been divided, and down at the corner in a little V of land where three roads came together and divided, the land sloped from a high wall of hedge, with a tiny gravelled path to the sidewalk, there stood the dearest little land office that ever a developing operation dared to build. It was not more than nine or ten feet long and six or seven feet wide, but it had five windows and a door, and the tiniest little front porch with a seat on each side as perfect and complete as any little house that ever was built. A vine had clambered over the portico and spread to cover one entire end, and there were window boxes in the front windows where flowers had grown the past year, though weeds were overrunning them now.

As she drew nearer Joyce perceived that it had a neglected air as if no one owned it or the owner was away and didn’t care, and it seemed somehow so much like her own forlorn self, hunting a home and a place in life, that her heart went out to it wistfully.

Then strangest of all just as she was feeling that way she turned the sharp point of the corner and saw two men working about it at the back, and perceived one of them raise a heavy implement and deal a tremendous blow at the little dwelling sitting so cozily there on the little knoll, with such a smiling, inviting air, doing its best to urge people to buy lots and build in this pleasant town.