Wearily she reached the Gladstone bag that her father had given her, down from the shelf at the top of the cupboard in the wall. It was not very large, and luckily it was light; she felt that she could carry it quite well to the station. She put together the things she thought she might want immediately, the bag held them quite easily. Then she drew out a trunk and packed the rest of her clothes into it. At the far end of the room there was a little old-fashioned bureau in which she kept the two quarters' money that had come since her father went away. She took it out and looked at it wonderingly. And at last she sat down to write to her mother. As she opened her blotting-book she saw a sheet of note-paper that she had spoiled on the day she first wrote to Miss Hunstan. It set her thinking of Tom Carringford, and that awful tea at which Mr. Garratt had triumphantly put in his remarks; and suddenly she broke down and cried, for, after all, she was only a girl, and very lonely. Perhaps the tears made her feel better, for she took up her pen, but a little incoherent letter was all she could manage; she gave her mother Miss Hunstan's address, and said she would write again as soon as possible and every Sunday morning, and that she would love her every hour, and be her own girl and worthy of her. When it was done she laid it on the little black mahogany table, put on her every-day cape and hat, and took up her bag, hesitated, and looked round incredulously. It was such a strange thing to leave the house in the middle of the night, she could hardly believe that she was awake. She opened the door very cautiously and listened, but all was dark and still, save for the ticking of the old-fashioned clock in the passage below. She went softly down and waited and listened again, but no one had heard her. Along the passage to the back door, for there were not so many bolts to it as to the front one, and it could be opened more gently. The key was hanging on a hook, she took it down, turned it in the lock, drew back the one long bolt, and stepped out. The summer air came soft and cool upon her face, but the sky was clouded. She drew the door to, locked it outside, and slipped the key under it back into the passage, and stood a fugitive in the darkness. She grasped her bag tightly and went softly over the stones that were just outside the back door, and so round to the garden, down the green pathway and through the gate; it closed with a click, and she wondered if Hannah heard it in her sleep; across the field and over the stile--she thought of Mr. Garratt--into the next field, and then suddenly she realized the folly of this headlong departure. She might at least have waited till the morning, for there was no train till six o'clock. She had five or six hours in which to walk as many miles. She sat down on the step of the stile and strained her eyes to see the trees that made her cathedral, but they were only a mass of blackness