Aderhold looked beyond at the wavy green path and the massed trees of the forest. He, too, loved this country. He had thought much here—once or twice the light had shone through. But he was ready now to go. Just as soon as there was no more sick, just as soon as the plague was gone, he meant to steal from the Oak Grange and Hawthorn countryside. He and Joan came to the little gate, and he went out of it, then turning for a moment looked back at the thatched cottage, the pleasant beehives, the fruit trees that ere long would put forth a mist of bloom. Joan stood with a sorrowful face, but grey-eyed, vital. Her hand rested upon the worn wood. He laid his own upon it, lightly, for one moment. “Good-bye,” he said, “Mistress Friendly-Soul!” She stood in the pale sunshine until he was gone from sight, then turned and went back to her kitchen. She must bake bread; there was nothing for her to eat in the cottage. She must get water from the well. She took her well-bucket, went forth and brought it back brimming. From the faggot pile she fed the fire, then brought to the table coarse flour and other matters for the bread, mixed and worked, moulded and set to bake. And all the time she tried to feel that her father was sitting there, in the settle corner. She made the table clear again, then looked at her wheel. But she did not feel like spinning; her heart was burdened again; she sat down on the stool by the fire and bowed her head in her arms. “Day after day and day after day,” she said; “day after day and day after day.” She rocked herself. “And a powerful man that I hate to come again and yet again to trouble me, and father not here.... Day after day and day after day.... And I know not why it is, but I have no friends. They’ve turned against me, and I know not why.... Day after day—” She sat with buried head and rocked herself slowly to and fro. Save for the youth in her form and the thick, pale bronze of her braided hair, she might have seemed Mother Spuraway, or Marget Primrose, or any other old and desolate woman. She rocked herself, and the faggot burned apart, and the cat stretched itself in the warmth. From outside the cottage came a thin calling. “_Joan! Joan! Oh, Joan!_” Joan lifted her head, listened a moment, then rose and opened the door. “_Joan! Joan! Oh, Joan!_” She stepped without and saw who it was,—Alison Inch and Cecily Lukin calling to her from the green path well beyond the gate. They would come at first no nearer. The plague had struck in the Lukin cottage no less than in Heron’s, and for weeks it had closely neighboured Alison Inch and her mother. But Joan must be made to feel comrades’ terror of her. “Joan! Joan! Have you got it yet?—We want but to see if you’re living!” With a gesture of anger Joan turned to reënter the cottage. But Alison did not wish that. “Joan! Joan! We were laughing. We’re not afraid if you don’t come very close.—I’ve got something to tell you. See! I’m not afraid.”