Few girls of her age would have dared to do what she was doing. But Posey was not timid by nature, and much of her courage came from the tension of her feverish excitement. Still, when she had passed through the village, where all was familiar and there was a certain sense of companionship in the clustered houses and the thought of the sleeping people inside, and leaving the last house behind, from the hill-top on which she stood, she saw the open fields and dark woods stretch away till they melted in dimness, her heart beat fast and almost failed. For with the sight a sudden sense of desolation rushed over her, a realization of how alone and young, and weak and helpless she was. For the first time, too, she began to be troubled by thoughts of the future. She had heard of runaways who had to sleep nights in old barns and under haystacks. Boys from the Refuge had sometimes run away, and when brought back had told such stories. Very likely she would have to also, and it seemed to her that it would be dreadful to sleep in an old barn, especially if there should be rats. Besides when her little store of provision was gone, how would she live unless she begged? She had often seen ragged children in the city going from door to door with baskets, but that was a degradation she had never known—one her whole nature shrank from. She would rather starve, she felt, than to beg at doors, and perhaps be turned away, as she knew beggars so often were. As all these things rose before her Posey almost wished herself back safe in the little room she had left. Almost but not quite, for a memory of Mrs. Hagood’s face as she had last seen it, and Mrs. Hagood’s voice as it had last reached her ear stayed her wavering. “I won’t go back now, if I die,” she pledged herself, setting her teeth firmly, and bracing herself with dogged resolution. “But oh, how I do wish I could have brought Rover!” CHAPTER VIII A NEW ACQUAINTANCE That night’s experience was one Posey never forgot. The road she had chosen she was now on for the first time; where it led to she had no idea; all she knew about it was that it would take her away from Mrs. Hagood, and in the direction where she thought there would be least danger of her being looked for. But once fairly started she hurried on, her one thought and anxiety to put all the distance possible between herself and Horsham before her absence was discovered.