Betty knew every foot of this road. She had trundled her hoop on it, her hair flying in the wind, when she first came to Keyport to school. She had trodden it many a time with Caleb; had idled along its curves with Lacey before the day when her life came to an end, and had plodded over it many a weary hour since, as she went to her work in the village or returned to Captain Joe’s. Every stone and tree and turn were familiar to her, and she could have found her way in the pitch-dark to the captain’s or to Caleb’s, just as she had done again and again in the days before the street lights were set, or when Caleb would be standing on the porch, if she were late, shading his eyes and peering down the road, the kitchen lamp in his hand. “I was gittin’ worrited, little woman; what kep’ ye?” he would say. She had never been afraid in those days, no matter what the hour. Everybody knew her. “Oh, that’s you, Mis’ West, is it? I kind o’ mistrusted it was,” would come from some shadowy figure across the road. All this was changed for her now. There were places along the highway that made her draw her shawl closer, often half hiding her face. She would shudder as she turned the corner by the church, the one where the captain and Aunty Bell had taken her the first Sunday after her coming back. The big, gloomy oil warehouse where she had nursed Lacey seemed to her haunted and uncanny, and at night more gloomy than ever without a ray of light in any one of its broken, staring windows. Even the fishing-smacks, anchored out of harm’s way for the night, looked gruesome and mysterious, with single lights aloft, and black hulls and masts reflected in the water. It was never until she reached the willows that her agitation disappeared. These grew just opposite Captain Potts’s fish-house. There were three of them, and their branches interlocked and spread across the road, the spaces between the trunks being black at night, despite the one street lamp nailed to the fish-house across the way. When Betty gained these trees her breath always came freer. She could then see along the whole road, away past Captain Joe’s, and up the hill. She could see, too, Caleb’s cabin from this spot, and the lamp burning in the kitchen window. She knew who was sitting beside it. From these willows, also, she could run for Captain Joe’s swinging gate with its big ball and chain, getting safely inside before Caleb could pass and see her, if by any chance he should be on the road and coming to the village. Once she had met him this side of their dark shadows. It was on a Saturday, and he was walking into the village, his basket on his arm. He was going for his Sunday supplies, no doubt. The Ledge gang must have come in sooner than usual, for it was early twilight. She had seen him coming a long way off, and had looked about for some means of escape. There was no mistaking his figure. She would know him as far as she could see him,—that strong, broad figure, with the awkward, stiff walk