She flung herself on her back and looked at the ceiling. Across its rather dirty surface many cracks had spread themselves, and these furnished Theresa with the scene for an epic in which the adventures of a courageous family were described. The cracks represented roads, rushing rivers, and precipitous mountains, according to their shape and size, and all the weary way from the crack that began near the window to the safety of the damp stain by the door, that family had to travel. Each morning she led them a few miles across the waste and there was never a mile without excitement. There were storms at night when tents were blown down on their unhappy heads, and must be put up again with no light for guidance but the reason of a child of ten who alone remained unafraid; there were combined attacks on their camp by wolves and tigers, who seemed quite impervious to climate, when fires were lighted and each member of the party sat with a rifle across her knees; there were dust storms in the desert, and, not less swift and overwhelming, onslaughts by brigands clothed as Arabs and riding horses winged like Pegasus. Precipices must be scaled and swollen rivers crossed, but no life or battle was ever lost by this gallant company. They would reach their destination with little scathe, but so great was Theresa's interest that she could always preserve the necessary illusion and grow hot and cold with fear for them. This morning she found she could not lose herself in these perils, for the boats were calling her too persistently; moreover, she must husband these adventures if they were to last until the dark mornings came, when the cracks would be invisible and she must rise by candlelight, so she gave Grace a parting thump and sprang out of bed. As she stood at the window, she felt the delicious cold of the bare boards to her feet and the wind fluttering the frills of her nightgown. Holding her hands to her throat, she looked out on the untidy sloping garden with the old apple-tree at its foot. So close to the garden that, in the autumn, apples were found in its grass, the disused cemetery continued the descent, studded with grey, mossy stones and spreading willows--a place of ghosts--and, as if drawn thither by its eerie neighbourhood, a monumental stone-mason had his yard on the other side of the road at Theresa's right hand, a road running steeply to the busy street that edged the river and the docks. But if Theresa looked from her window, letting her eyes take flight over the river and the shipping and the level fields that lay on the further side, she saw a great stretch of meadow land which sought the clouds. It spread from left to right, for the whole width of her vision, and at night it seemed to stand up like a wall. The land behind that rampart seemed very far away, but not beyond her reach, and she meant to get there--not this morning, for the boats were calling to her, but on some day when spring flowers were appearing in the hedges.