She turned away from her thin face, seen quickly in a mirror, and fear that had crouched in her thought leaped to become a pain in her breast. She was losing what she had gained, the little she had so carefully built together. It was difficult now to walk her small round, through the trees, along the fence to the stile, to the wood-lot, back up the stair. A dragging weariness which she thought would be hunger gnawed at her body. She had talked of it to her aunt, saying, “When I am stronger I will go.” A curious smile had settled to the dim eyes that were glassed over with the fantasies of books. She was walking out toward the stile in the cold of a December day, the wind blowing her dress and beating through her thin blood, changing her breath to a quivering chill. It came to her as she neared the stile that she would go to the tenant man, Walter Bland, and say, “I must have food, every day; I will sell something. My books are all I have. How will I do it? What shall I do?” She would say, “As a human being and a neighbor, tell me what I’d better do. You know yourself how Aunt Doe lives. We are all here together on the farm. Now what must I do?” He would be rude and rough in his speech, but he would suggest some plan. He would do something. She climbed over the stile with a new strength and went down the pasture slowly, stopping to regain her panting breath. She was glad that she had decided to do this. A strength greater than she had came to her with the determination and the satisfaction in her plan. She thought that Bland might want some of the books for himself, and she began to name in mind such of the books as might be within his reach. Walter came suddenly out of the brush at the foot of the pasture, just where she entered the field. Her hand was reached to the loop of the wire that held the field gate in place. He came out of the cherry brush suddenly and stood ten feet away. A hard voice accompanied his approach, spreading through the cherry glades and meeting the cold of the wind on the briars. “You keep on back up the hill. Don’t you be a-comen down here now. You keep on back up where you belong.” She tried to say what she had come to say, her words entangled until they were meaningless. The voice spoke out steadily over her struggle to speak. “You keep on back up to the house.” He glanced fearfully toward the field and the way of the cabin. “You got no business here. You go on back.” Her words rushed out upon her breath and were shaken with the chill of her body. Her plan would not yield to his uncomprehended speech, and she stood against the gray weathered gate. She drew the flying ends of her bright scarf from before her eyes and stated again her errand. He spoke over her words, trampling them out with his rough voice. “You keep on back up the hill.... Where you stay.... Anything happens, who is’t gets strung up to a limb? Not you. You go on back. Don’t you be a-comen down this-here way. On back.... You go on, I say.”