Ann stood at the door, hearing her walking heavily away, and a gentle rage possessed her when she noted how broad her back looked, how capable of carrying burdens to their goal. She was deeply attached to Mrs. John C., but she realized how impossible it was to block her purposes. Hitherto they had all seemed beneficent ones; but now Ann felt something of the indignant protest that always surged in her when she saw a sleek and prosperous cat baiting a mouse. She went in and sat down again, with a double anxiety upon her. It was not only her tea-set she lamented, but the hardness of life wherein any creature should be worried down and caught. And she remembered, as she did not in loyalty allow herself to remember often, that her brother also had been wild. Suddenly something roused her. It was not so much a thought as a touch upon her heart, and she sat up straight, as full of fire and purpose as Mrs. John C. herself, only it was purpose of another kind. Mrs. John C. had the force of weight, and in Ann there were tense fibres of youth, not yet done thrilling. She threw her little shawl over her head and hurried out of the house. For an instant she paused, with a new impulse of caution, to lock the door. Then with a scorn of her present possessions, her one treasure gone, she latched it only, and took the wood-path to the swamp. Ann walked with a trained delicacy and caution suited to the woods. The thrilling of the frogs grew louder, and shortly she was at the old lightning oak that served her for a landmark. Before her lay the boggy place where she came in all warm seasons of the year for one thing or another: the wild marsh-marigold,--good for greens,--thoroughwort, and the root of the sweet-flag. P'ison flag grew here, too, the sturdy, delicate iris that made the swamp so gay. Ann stayed a moment for breath. Haste had driven the blood to her face, and the cool spring air seemed to generate in her the heat of summer. Until now she had loved the sound of the frogs, piping in the spring, but in the irritation of her trouble she spoke aloud to them: "Can't anybody be allowed to hear themselves think?" The haste of her errand tapped her again upon the arm, and she picked up the board which was one of the tools of her trade, left always at the foot of the lightning oak, and with it skirted the swamp to the east where the tussocks were large. Then, throwing her board before her from one foothold to another, she crossed the swamp. Twice she had fallen, and her dress was wet. She was muddy to the knees, but she wrung out her heavy skirts and ran along the path she knew to the door of the deserted house. Ann thought she had never seen a place so still. It had the desolation of a spot where life has been and where it is no more. She listened a moment, her eyes searching the dark bulk of the house, her hand upon her racing heart. She smelled smoke. Then she called:-- "You there? I know ye be. Open the door."