All that day she walked, keeping as far as was possible to the woods, but forced now and again to traverse open fields and long stretches of sunny road. If she saw any one coming, she hid in the roadside bushes, or, if that could not be done, walked steadily onward, with her head bent and her heart beating fast. It must have been a day for minding one's own business, for none stayed or questioned her. Her dinner she begged from some children whom she found in a wood gathering nuts. Supper she had none. When night fell, she was glad to lay herself down upon a bed of leaves that she had raked together; but she slept little, for the wind moaned in the half-clad branches, and she could not cease from counting the stars that shot. In the morning, numbed and cold, she went slowly on until she came to a wayside house. Quaker folk lived there; and they asked her no question, but with kind words gave her of what they had, and let her rest and grow warm in the sunshine upon their doorstep. She thanked them with shy grace, but presently, when they were not looking, rose and went her way. Upon the second day she kept to the road. It was loss of time wandering in the woods, skirting thicket and marsh, forced ever and again to return to the beaten track. She thought, also, that she must be safe, so far was she now from Fair View. How could they guess that she was gone to the mountains?
About midday, two men on horseback looked at her in passing. One spoke to the other, and turning their horses they put after and overtook her. He who had spoken touched her with the butt of his whip. "Ecod!" he exclaimed. "It's the lass we saw run for a guinea last May Day at Jamestown! Why so far from home, light o' heels?"
A wild leap of her heart, a singing in her ears, and Audrey clutched at safety.
"I be Joan, the smith's daughter," she said stolidly. "I niver ran for a guinea. I niver saw a guinea. I be going an errand for feyther."
"Ecod, then!" said the other man. "You're on a wrong scent. 'Twas no dolt that ran that day!"
The man who had touched her laughed. "'Facks, you are right, Tom! But I'd ha' sworn 't was that brown girl. Go your ways on your errand for 'feyther'!" As he spoke, being of an amorous turn, he stooped from his saddle and kissed her. Audrey, since she was at that time not Audrey at all, but Joan, the smith's daughter, took the salute as stolidly as she had spoken. The two men rode away, and the second said to the first: "A Williamsburgh man told me that the girl who won the guinea could speak and look like a born lady. Didn't ye hear the story of how she went to the Governor's ball, all tricked out, dancing, and making people think she was some fine dame from Maryland maybe? And the next day she was scored in church before all the town. I don't know as they put a white sheet on her, but they say 't was no more than her deserts."
Audrey, left standing in the sunny road, retook her own countenance, rubbed her cheek where the man's lips had touched it, and trembled like a leaf. She was frightened, both at the encounter and because she could make herself so like Joan,—Joan who lived near the crossroads ordinary, and who had been whipped at the Court House.
Late that afternoon she came upon two or three rude dwellings clustered about a mill. A knot of men, the miller in the midst, stood and gazed at the mill-stream. They wore an angry look; and Audrey passed them hastily by. At the farthest house she paused to beg a piece of bread; but the woman who came to the door frowned and roughly bade her begone, and a child threw a stone at her. "One witch is enough to take the bread out of poor folks' mouths!" cried the woman. "Be off, or I'll set the dogs on ye!" The children ran after her as she hastened from the inhospitable neighborhood. "'T is a young witch," they cried, "going to help the old one swim to-night!" and a stone struck her, bruising her shoulder.
She began to run, and, fleet of foot as she was, soon distanced her tormentors. When she slackened pace it was sunset, and she was faint with hunger and desperately weary. From the road a bypath led to a small clearing in a wood, with a slender spiral of smoke showing between the trees. Audrey went that way, and came upon a crazy cabin whose door and window were fast closed. In the unkempt garden rose an apple-tree, with the red apples shriveling upon its boughs, and from the broken gate a line of cedars, black and ragged, ran down to a piece of water, here ghastly pale, there streaked like the sky above with angry crimson. The place was very still, and the air felt cold. When no answer came to her first knocking, Audrey beat upon the door; for she was suddenly afraid of the road behind her, and of the doleful woods and the coming night.
The window shutter creaked ever so slightly, and some one looked out; then the door opened, and a very old and wrinkled woman, with lines of cunning about her mouth, laid her hand upon the girl's arm. "Who be ye?" she whispered. "Did ye bring warning? I don't say, mind ye, that I can't make a stream go dry,—maybe I can and maybe I can't,—but I didn't put a word on the one yonder." She threw up her arms with a wailing cry. "But they won't believe what a poor old soul says! Are they in an evil temper, honey?"