Ann went up to the house. It was a great relief to her to remember that
the man for whom she was going to ask help was no criminal. She could
hold up her head and speak boldly.
Another minute and she began to look curiously to see how long the grass
and weeds had grown before the door. It was some months since David
Brown had been here. The doubt which had entered Ann's mind grew
swiftly. She knocked loudly upon the door and upon the wooden shutters
of the windows. The knocks echoed through empty rooms.
She had no hesitation in house-breaking. In a shed at the back she found
a broken spade which formed a sufficiently strong and sharp lever for
her purpose. She pried open a shutter and climbed in. She found only
such furniture as was necessary for a temporary abode. A small iron
stove, a few utensils of tin, a huge sack which had been used for a
straw bed, and a few articles of wooden furniture, were all that was to
be seen.
Upon the canvas sack she seized eagerly. Bart might be dying, or he
might be recovering from some injury; in either case she had only one
desire, and that was to procure for him the necessary comforts. Having
no access to hay or straw, she began rapidly to gather the bracken which
was standing two and three feet high in great quantities wherever the
ground was dry under the trees. She worked with a nervous strength that
was extraordinary, even to herself, after the toilsome night. When she
had filled the sack, she put it upon the floor of the lower room and
went back to the canoe. She saw that Bart had roused himself and was
sitting up. He was even holding on to the rushes with his hand--an act
which she thought showed the dreamy state of his mind, for she did not
notice that the rope had come undone. She helped Bart out of the canoe,
putting her arm strongly round him so that he was able to walk. She saw
that he had not his mind yet; he said no word about the help she gave
him; he walked as a sleeping man might walk. When she laid him down upon
the bed of bracken and arranged his head upon the thicker part which she
had heaped for a pillow, he seemed to her to fall asleep almost at once;
and yet, for fear that his strange condition was not sleep, she hastily
opened the bag of food and the flask of rum.
She stripped the twigs from a tiny spruce tree, piling them inside the
old stove. When they had cracked and blazed with a fierce, sudden heat,
Ann could only break bread-crumbs into a cupful of boiling water and put
a few drops of rum in it. She woke Bart and fed him as she might have
fed a baby. When he lay down again exhausted, with that strange moan
which he always gave when he first put back his head, she had the
comfort of believing that a better colour came to his cheek than before.
She resolved that if he rested quietly for a few hours and appeared
better after the next food she gave him, she would think it safe to
cushion the canoe with bracken and take him home. This thought suggested
to her to moor the canoe.
She went down to the creek again, but it was too late. The water running
gently and steadily had done its work, taken the canoe out from among
the rushes, and floated it down between the mosses of the swamp. Making
her feet bare, she sprang from one clump of fern root to another,
sometimes missing her footing and striking to her knees through the
green moss that let her feet easily break into the black wet earth. In a
few minutes she could see the canoe. It had drifted just beyond the
swamp, where all the ground was lying under some feet of water; but
there a tree had turned its course out of the current of the creek, so
that it was now sidling against two ash trees, steady as if at anchor.
So few feet as it was from her, Ann saw at a glance that to reach it was
quite impossible. Realising the helplessness of her position without
this canoe, she might have been ready to brave the dangers of a struggle
in deep water to obtain it, but the danger was that of sinking in
bottomless mud. The canoe was wholly beyond her reach. Retracing her
steps, she washed her feet in the running creek, and, as she put on her
shoes, sitting upon the grassy bank in the morning sunlight, she felt
drowsily as if she must rest there for a few minutes. She let her head
fall upon the arm she had outstretched on the warm sod.
When she stirred again she had that curious feeling of inexplicable
lapse of time that comes to us after unexpected and profound slumber.
The sun had already passed the zenith; the tone in the voices of the
crickets, the whole colouring of earth and sky, told her, before she had
made any exact observation of the shadows, that it was afternoon.
She prepared more food for the sick man. When she had fed him and put
him to rest again, she went out to discover what means of egress by
land was to be found from this lonely dwelling. She followed the faint
trace of wheel-ruts over the grass, which for a short distance ran
through undergrowth of fir and weeds. She came out upon a cleared space
of some acres, from which a fine crop of hay had clearly been taken,
apparently about a month before. Whoever had mowed the hay had evidently
been engaged also in a further clearing of the land beyond, and there
was a small patch where tomatoes and pea vines lay neglected in the sun;
the peas had been gathered weeks before, but the tomatoes, later in
ripening, hung there turning rich and red. Ann went on across the
cleared space. Following the track, she came to a thick bit of bush
beyond, where a long cutting had been made, just wide enough for a cart
to pass through.
There was no other way out; Ann must walk through this long green
passage. No knight in a fairy tale ever entered path that looked more
remote from the world's thoroughfares. When she had walked a mile she
came to an opening where the ground dipped all round to a bottom which
had evidently at some time held water, for the flame-weed that grew
thick upon it stood even, the tops of its magenta flowers as level as a
lake--it was, in fact, a lake of faded crimson lying between shores of
luxuriant green. The cart-ruts went right down into the flame-flowers,
and she thought she could descry where they rose from them on the other
side. Evidently the blossoming had taken place since the last cart had
passed over, and no doubt many miles intervened between this and the
next dwelling-house. Nothing but the thought of necessities that might
arise for help on Bart's account made her make the toilsome passage,
knee-deep among the flowers, to see whether, beyond that, the road was
passable; but she only found that it was not fit for walkers except at a
time of greater drought than the present. The swamp crept round in a
ring, so that she discovered herself to be upon what was actually an
island. Ann turned back, realising that she was a prisoner.
On her way home again she gathered blood-red tomatoes; and finding a
wild apple tree, she added its green fruit to what she already held
gathered in the skirt of her gown; starvation at least was not a near
enemy.
She had made her investigation calmly, and with a light heart; she felt
sure that Bart had grown better and stronger during the day, and that
was all that she cared about. She never paused to ask herself why his
recovery was not merely a humane interest but such a satisfying joy.
The knowledge of her present remoteness from all distresses of her life
as a daughter and sister came to her with a wonderful sense of rest, and
opened her mind to the sweet influences of the summer night and its
stars as that mind had never been opened before.
She cooked the apples and tomatoes, making quite a good meal for
herself. Then she roused Bart, and gave him part of the cooked fruit.