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It had been one of the warm and almost sultry days which sometimescome in November; a maligned month, which is really an epitome of theother eleven, or a sort of index to the whole year's changes of stormand sunshine. The afternoon was like spring, the air was soft anddamp, and the buds of the willows had been beguiled into swelling alittle, so that there was a bloom over them, and the grass looked asif it had been growing green of late instead of fading steadily. Itseemed like a reprieve from the doom of winter, or from even Novemberitself.
The dense and early darkness which usually follows such unseasonablemildness had already begun to cut short the pleasures of thisspring-like day, when a young woman, who carried a child in her arms,turned from a main road of Oldfields into a foot-path which ledsouthward across the fields and pastures. She seemed sure of her way,and kept the path without difficulty, though a stranger might easilyhave lost it here and there, where it led among the patches ofsweet-fern or bayberry bushes, or through shadowy tracts of smallwhite-pines. She stopped sometimes to rest, and walked more and morewearily, with increasing effort; but she kept on her way desperately,as if it would not do to arrive much later at the place which she wasseeking. The child seemed to be asleep; it looked too heavy for soslight a woman to carry.
The path led after a while to a more open country, there was a lowhill to be climbed, and at its top the slender figure stopped andseemed to be panting for breath. A follower might have noticed that itbent its head over the child's for a moment as it stood, dark againstthe darkening sky. There had former