"LOIS STOLE INTO THE ROOM"
Far over on what must have been the other side of the track, they occasionally saw the light of a house; at one place there seemed to be a little hamlet, from the number of lights. They were clearly on the wrong bank; they should have crossed over at the station. The only house they came to was the skeleton of one, the walls blackened and charred with fire. There was only that endless line of wire fencing along which they pushed forward painfully, with dragging step; instead of passing any given point, the road seemed to keep on with them, as if they could never get farther on. Wire fencing, and moonlight, and silence, and trees. Trees! They became night-marishly oppressive in those dark, solemn ranks and groups—those silent thicknesses; the air grew chill beneath them; terror lurked in the shadows. Oh, to get out from under the trees, with only the clear sky overhead! If that road to the house of Eugene Larue had seemed a part of infinity in the dimness of the unknown, what was this?
They sat down now every little while to rest, Dosia's voice coaxing and cheering, and then got up to shake the earth out of their shoes and struggle on once more—bending, shivering, leaning against each other for support; two silent and puny figures, outside of any connection with other lives, toiling, as it seemed, against the universe, as women do toil, apparently futile of result.
Once the loud blare of a horn sent them over to the side of the road, clinging to the wire fencing, as an automobile shot by—a cheerful monster that spoke of life in towns, leaving a new and sharp desolation behind it. Why hadn't they seen it before? Why hadn't they tried to hail it when they did see? To have had such a chance and lost it! Once they were frightened almost uncontrollably by a group approaching with strange sounds—Italian laborers, cheerful and unintelligible when Dosia intrepidly questioned them. They passed on, still jabbering; two bedraggled women and a baby were no novelty to them. Then there was more long, high fencing, and moonlight, and silence, and shadows, and trees—and trees——
"Do you suppose we'll ever get out of here?" asked Lois at last, dully.
"Why, of course; we can't help getting out, if we keep on," said Dosia, in a comfortingly matter-of-fact tone.
It was she who was helper and guide now.
"Oh, if I had never left Justin! Why, why did I leave him? How far do you think we have walked, Dosia?"
"It seems so endless, I can't tell; but we must be nearly at Haledon," said Dosia. "Let's sit down and rest awhile here. Oh, Lois, Lois dear!" She had taken off her jacket and spread it on the damp grass for them both to sit on, huddled close together, and now pressed the older woman's head down on her shoulder, holding both mother and child in her young arms.
Lois lay there without stirring. Far off in the stillness, there came the murmur of the brook they had passed in the train—so long since, it seemed! The moon hung high above now, pouring a flood of light down through the arching branches of the trees upon her beautiful face with its closed eyes, and the tiny features of the sleeping child. Something in the utter relaxation of the attitude and manner began to alarm the girl.