ground with one foot. Having quieted his horse, the farmer also turned in his seat, and looking back at Anne said: "I've just been up to the Union with the milk, Miss Hilton. They've had a death this morning. I thought I'd tell you." "Not Jane Evans?" said Anne, dropping the reins, but the next moment retaking them as the pony had started off. "Yes, it's Jane," said the man. "The child's living. It's a boy. She's to be buried to-morrow seemingly. They soon put you where they want you when you go in there." Anne, who had been living all morning with the dead whom she knew to be dead, stared helplessly as she heard that one whom she believed to be alive was dead also. She had meant to go to the Union to-morrow. She was speechless. "She had a drouth on her it seems, and couldn't drag herself up again," said the farmer. Anne remembered the room with its blue-covered beds, and the fire burning beneath the lithograph of Queen Victoria, and the girl sitting beside it whom she could not reach by speaking, and who was now indeed dead. "You'll perhaps be going up?" said the farmer, as if to lay on someone else the responsibility of knowing about it also. "I'll go up this afternoon," returned Anne, picking up the whip and flicking the pony. The farmer said "Good morning," and the rattle of milk cans once more filled the road as his horse set off at a gallop towards home. CHAPTER XVIII When the business of the market was done, and Anne reached the Union, it was late in the afternoon. The roads outside the town were full of farmers returning from the market, of women walking with empty baskets, and an occasional small herd of cattle, being driven away from the terrifying experience of the town, by a purchaser. It was visiting-day at the Union, and here and there from the out-going stream, a man or woman of middle-age turned aside to enter the gate of the big brick building, in whose side-garden men were working, dressed in the bottle-green corduroy of the institution. The presence of spring seemed to surge about the bare building. The trees planted about it were old, and belonged to an older building which protruded from the back; the weather-stained wall was old also, and the sunlight, older than either, shone with an urgent warmth beneath the heavy green shade. Rows of green blades were appearing in the border, set aside for ornament. The air, the clouds, the light near the ground, all seemed alive with the peculiar revival only felt in the spring. Anne was admitted with others to the corridor, and left while they turned to the places they sought. "She might see the Matron," said the porter, going along with a clatter of his feet to the far end of the corridor and knocking at a door. The Matron almost immediately emerged carrying a large key.