The sun was now well up, and as Posey paused she looked around the unfamiliar landscape. What she saw was a stretch of level, low-lying fields which merged into a wooded swamp—a thick tangle of trees and bushes whose dark line spread out as far as her eye could follow. Beyond the swamp, and at no great distance, rose a steep range of wooded hills; solid masses of gayly tinted colors they appeared that morning, following with gentle curves the windings of the swamp; and crowning the highest of these hills, rising above the trees, lifted the white spire of a church, its gilted weather-vane glittering in the sun. Before her the white road lifted in a long upward swell that made her sigh with the thought of climbing it, and shut in her view to the flat around. But one house was near—a tall gaunt house of weather-beaten red, standing on a slight knoll a little back from the road, with a single tree, a tall and sombre pine, beside it, and all the green paper curtains that shaded its front windows drawn closely down. A dreary house it was in Posey’s eyes, and the people who lived in it she thought must grow so tired of looking out on those flat pastures, tufted with hillocks of coarse, marshy grass, and the swamp with its bordering fringe of dead, grey bushes. But it may be that to her eyes the fairest view would have taken on something of her desolate mood. In the sand that now made the road, her steps dragged heavier and more slowly, but save for brief pauses to rest she dared not stop. She was not far enough away. Oh, no, not yet. Mrs. Hagood might be hunting her even then, was the thought hurrying her on. She was hungry, too, with the crisp air, and her exertion, for all the hearty lunch she had taken at starting; but she was afraid to make any inroad on the contents of her basket, for when once that was gone she had no idea how or where she would get anything more. It would be dreadful to keep feeling so faint and hungry, and was there anybody anywhere, she wondered, who would pity her enough to give her something to eat, or take her in when it came night again? Or would she have to go on and on, till she fell down somewhere and died? And a slow trickle of tears ran down her cheeks at the foreboding. This was a hard world, she bitterly felt, for girls who had no homes. If God was good why didn’t He make homes, real homes, for all of them? She was sure she would if she were God, and especially one for poor Posey Sharpe.