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I

THE LAST MILE


It had been one of the warm and almost sultry days which sometimes
come in November; a maligned month, which is really an epitome of the
other eleven, or a sort of index to the whole year's changes of storm
and sunshine. The afternoon was like spring, the air was soft and
damp, and the buds of the willows had been beguiled into swelling a
little, so that there was a bloom over them, and the grass looked as
if it had been growing green of late instead of fading steadily. It
seemed like a reprieve from the doom of winter, or from even November
itself.

The dense and early darkness which usually follows such unseasonable
mildness had already begun to cut short the pleasures of this
spring-like day, when a young woman, who carried a child in her arms,
turned from a main road of Oldfields into a foot-path which led
southward across the fields and pastures. She seemed sure of her way,
and kept the path without difficulty, though a stranger might easily
have lost it here and there, where it led among the patches of
sweet-fern or bayberry bushes, or through shadowy tracts of small
white-pines. She stopped sometimes to rest, and walked more and more
wearily, with increasing effort; but she kept on her way desperately,