This was a strange scene my father came on. He pulled up his big red-roan horse at the crossroads, where the long lane entered the turnpike, and looked at the stiff, tragic figure. He rode home from a sitting of the county justices, alone, at peace, on this midsummer night, and God sent this tragic thing to meet him.
He got down and stood under the crossroads signboard beside his horse.
The earth was dry; in dust. The dead grass and the dead leaves made a sere, yellow world. It looked like a land of unending summer, but a breath of chill came out of the hollows with the sunset.
The girl would have gone on, oblivious. But my father went down into the road and took her by the arm. She stopped when she saw who it was, and spoke in the dead, uninflected voice of a person in extremity.
“Is the thing a lie?” she said.
“What thing, child?” replied my father.
“The thing he told me!”
“Dillworth?” said my father. “Do you mean Hambleton Dillworth?”
The girl put out her free arm in a stiff, circling gesture. “In all the world,” she said, “is there any other man who would have told me?”
My father's face hardened as if of metal. “What did he tell you?”