of this check on the way home, made several attempts to start, and at
last, being held in by his master and scolded loudly, fell to pawing the
ground with one foot. Having quieted his horse, the farmer also turned
in his seat, and looking back at Anne said:

"I've just been up to the Union with the milk, Miss Hilton. They've had
a death this morning. I thought I'd tell you."

"Not Jane Evans?" said Anne, dropping the reins, but the next moment
retaking them as the pony had started off.

"Yes, it's Jane," said the man. "The child's living. It's a boy. She's
to be buried to-morrow seemingly. They soon put you where they want you
when you go in there."

Anne, who had been living all morning with the dead whom she knew to be
dead, stared helplessly as she heard that one whom she believed to be
alive was dead also. She had meant to go to the Union to-morrow. She was
speechless.

"She had a drouth on her it seems, and couldn't drag herself up again,"
said the farmer.

Anne remembered the room with its blue-covered beds, and the fire
burning beneath the lithograph of Queen Victoria, and the girl sitting
beside it whom she could not reach by speaking, and who was now indeed
dead.

"You'll perhaps be going up?" said the farmer, as if to lay on someone
else the responsibility of knowing about it also.