Two miles beyond the plantation, across the creek, a new railway line had established a station called Maurice, and about this nucleus a village grew with surprising rapidity. The site selected on Eglah's land by the railway company chanced to be that of the neighborhood school-house, where, on the fourth Sunday of each month, a Methodist minister of many mission chapels preached. Mrs. Mitchell had organized a Sabbath school, and Eglah had given a cabinet organ, but the figure shrouded in mourning was seen only when driving in her trap, or more frequently alone on horseback. These long rides through rolling pine forests and silent sunny glades, where she met none but her own velvet-eyed, browsing red cattle, and shy, happy rabbits, were hours of immeasurable relief; yet, at intervals, proved battle-ground on which she fought the crowding spectres of a sombre, brooding future. Political and social ambitions were shut forever in her father's grave; domestic duties ended when the doors and gates of Nutwood had been locked; and business affairs were in far wiser hands than hers. What should she do with her empty life? One afternoon, goaded by sad thoughts, she had ridden farther than usual, and, returning, reined her horse in at the brink of a meadow to tighten her coil of hair, shaken by a rapid gallop. Before her a group of young, red, dappled calves lay in the thick grass, their soft eyes wonderingly alert, and all Pan's orchestra seemed rehearsing. A wood-lark in a crab-apple bush set the pitch, a red-bird followed; two crows answered from the top of an ancient pine, and among beech boughs a velvet-throated thrush trilled, while under sedge shadows frogs croaked a hoarse bassoon. From the edge of a pool dimpling the turf white herons rose, flitting slowly across an orange sky, where cloud fringes burned in the similitude of scarlet tulips. If she could cease to be a woman with an aching heart and an immortal soul, what a peaceful home was here among the sinless forest children vast mother earth had called to sing and play in her pine-roofed, grassy nursery. If the sylvan quietude of this Theocritan retreat had power to witch her surging pulses to unbroken calm, she might hide for ever in her own green aisles, secure from stinging shafts of gossip and derision. She lifted the reins and the horse sprang forward. A year ago Mr. Herriott had sailed. No tidings reached her; no allusion to the "Ahvungah" had appeared in any of the newspapers she searched daily. She knew the vessel would not stop at an American port--would return directly to Europe from the Arctic circle--but the American press would chronicle the close of the expedition. If disaster had overtaken it, how soon could she know?