"Lois, we must go on," she said, with an anxious note in her voice. "Lois! You mustn't give up. We can't stay here!"
"Yes, I know," said Lois. She struggled to her feet, and began to walk ahead slowly. Dosia, behind her, flung out her arms to the shadow-embroidered road over which they had just passed.
"Oh, why don't you come!" she whispered again intensely, with passionate reproach; and then, swiftly catching up with Lois, took the child from her, and again they stumbled on together, haltingly, to the accompaniment of that far-off brook.
The wire fencing ceased, but the road became narrower, the walls of trees darker, closer together, though the soil underfoot grew firmer. They had to stop every few minutes to rest. Lois saw ever before her the one objective point—a dimly lighted room, with Justin stretched out upon the bed, dying, while she could not get there.
"Hark!" said Dosia suddenly, standing still. The sound of a voice trolling drunkenly made itself heard, came nearer, while the women stood terrified. The thing they had both unspeakably dreaded had happened; the moonlight brought into view the unmistakable figure of a tramp, with a bundle swung upon his shoulder. No terror of the future could compare with this one, that neared them with the seconds, swaying unsteadily from side to side of the road, as the tipsy voice alternately muttered and roared the reiterated words:
For I have come from Pad-dy land,
The land—I do adore!
They had fled, crouching into the bushes at the edge of the path, and he passed with his eyes on the ground, or he must have seen—a blotched, dark-visaged, leering creature, living in an insane world of his own. They waited until he was far out of sight before creeping, all of a tremble, from their shelter, only to hear another footfall unexpectedly near:—the pad, pad, pad of a runner, a tall figure as one saw it through the lights and shadows under the trees, capless and coatless, with sleeves rolled up, arms bent at the elbows, and head held forward. Suddenly the pace slackened, stopped.
"Great heavens!" said the voice of Bailey Girard.
"Oh, it's you, it's you!" cried Dosia, running to him with an ineffable, revealing gesture, a lovely motion of her upflinging arms, a passion of joy in the face upraised to his, that called forth an instantly flashing, all-embracing light in his.
In that moment there was an acknowledgment in each of an intimacy that went back of all words, back of all action. The arm that upheld her gripped her close to him as one who defends his own, as he said tensely: