Then, strangely enough, the desolation of the surrounding landscape brusquely whelmed her again. She felt very much alone with this Mr. Wilson, with his stoop of the shoulders, his weary eyes, his attitude of profound lassitude. "I must start off for my station," she said decidedly. II Miss Terrill leaned at the window of her new home, looking out into the dark of the plaza. She had put out the lamp, the room behind her also was dark, and between these two obscurities she felt rather lone. At intervals alarmingly frequent her rallying cry, "cheer up," chirped in the heated silence; but difficult it was for the spirit to obey the command of the lips. She had gone through a great deal of late--not so much in actual hardship; she could bear that buoyantly; but little by little the oppression of the Land had heaped upon her and she felt a very little girl indeed. Something akin to self-compassion filled her being as she dwelled over the events of the past days: the sudden and thorough inefficiency of Mr. Wilson when it came to arranging for her departure; the long enervating wait for mythical carts, for carabaos that did not come; then, after she had taken hold of things and the evasive Presidente, suddenly alacritous at the stamp of her foot, like a magician produced animals and vehicles by the dozen, the long ride to her station--the bumping and creaking of the ox-cart; the mud, the fearful bottomless mud; the miring in the rice lands, beneath the leaden sun, in the pestilential swamp; the miles paced slow as the crawl of an hour-hand while time slid by and the day died in gloomy splendour. And then the entry into the pueblo at midnight, amid the howl of dogs, the croak of frogs, the shrill concert of katydids; the dinner at the Presidente's, with this people of alien race, of dark skins, of incomprehensible tongue; the appalling lack of comfort, of cleanliness--and then the night: she would never forget it, that first night in Barang. Her cot had been placed in a big bare room. Through the torn roof she could see a lone star. There was rice stored in the corner of the room, and giant rats thundered over the loose planking, squealed and fought, while outside in the scum of the ditches the beasts of humidity shrilled in rasping clamour. Then the arising in the morning, weary to death, shrinking in fear at the thought of the first survey, in the inexorable sunlight, of the place which was to be her abode for twelve long months at least; and that first look--the wide, grass-dishevelled plaza with the carabaos wallowing in the mud holes, the ponies dying of surra at their pickets, the leprous-walled, crumbling church across, the thousand leaning, rotting nipa shacks, the musty mountains steaming in the east.