A glance toward the house showed a light in one of the upper windows and in a panic she stole breathlessly from bush to bush and from shadow to shadow till she reached the gate and the high road. Then a new fear overtook her. She would run the risk of meeting early milk carts, perhaps stray tramps if she walked along through the village. Some one might recognize her. It would not do at this early hour in the morning. Where could she hide until a respectable hour for a young woman to be out alone? How could she explain her presence there? For she was not one of the modern girls who go where they please and let people think what they like. She had been taught that there was a certain consideration for one’s reputation that was right and perfectly consistent with independence. One of the precepts that Aunt Mary had ingrained into her nature had been that good old Bible verse, “Let not your good be evil spoken of” and she had grown up with a sane and wholesome idea of values that helped immensely when she came to a crisis anywhere. She hurried down the road which would presently merge into the village street, as noiselessly as possible, and cast about for a possible retreat. Then she came to a low rail fence skirting a pasture. The breath of the cows came sweetly in the gray dawn, mingled with the smell of earth and growing things. She could look across a wide expanse to wooded hills several miles away. There seemed to be no buildings to suggest the presence of humans, and cows were safe friends--at least most of them. She could keep close to the fence and climb if there happened to be a bull in the lot. With a hasty glance backward and each way she climbed the fence and dropped into the pasture, skirting along its edge, and down away from the street. It was still too dark for her to be visible from the road, and she would surely find somewhere to sit down and wait until a respectable hour. She made her way safely through two pastures, stumbling now and then over the clumps of violets, or little hillocks of grass, but the meadow was for the most part smooth with the cropping of the cows, and it was growing lighter all the time. In the second pasture the ground dipped till it came to a little rivulet tinkling along over bright pebbles, and giving an absurdly miniature reflection of the dawn in pink and gold as it ran; and here, under a great old chestnut tree, she dropped down and looked about her.