The Wayfarers — Part 219

Once the loud blare of a horn sent them over to the side of the road, clinging to the wire fencing, as an automobile shot by—a cheerful monster that spoke of life in towns, leaving a new and sharp desolation behind it. Why hadn’t they seen it before? Why hadn’t they tried to hail it when they _did_ see? To have had such a chance and lost it! It seemed to have come and gone too swiftly for coherent thought. Once they were frightened almost uncontrollably by a group of men approaching with strange sounds—a group of Italian laborers, cheerful and unintelligible when Dosia intrepidly questioned them. They passed on, still jabbering, two bedraggled women and a baby were no novelty to them. Then there were more long, high fencing, and moonlight, and silence, and shadows, and trees—and trees—

“Do you suppose we’ll _ever_ get out of here?” asked Lois at last, dully.

“Why, of course; we can’t help getting out, if we keep on,” said Dosia, in a comfortingly matter-of-fact tone.

“Oh, if I had never left Justin! Why, why did I leave him? How far do you think we have walked, Dosia?”

“It seems so endless, I can’t tell; but we must be nearly at Haledon,” said Dosia. “Let’s sit down and rest awhile here. Oh, Lois, Lois _dear_!” She had taken off her jacket and spread it on the damp grass for them both to sit on, huddled close together, and now pressed the older woman’s head down on her shoulder, holding both mother and child in her young arms. “Oh, Lois, Lois!”

Lois lay there without stirring. Far off in the stillness, there came the murmur of the brook they had passed in the train—so long since, it seemed! The moon hung higher above now, pouring a flood of light down through the arching branches of the trees upon her beautiful face with its closed eyes, and the tiny features of the sleeping child. Something in the utter relaxation of the attitude and manner began to alarm the girl.

“Lois, we must go on,” she said, with an anxious note in her voice. “Lois! You _mustn’t_ give up. We can’t stay here!”

“Yes, I know,” said Lois. She struggled to her feet, and began to walk ahead slowly. Dosia, behind her, flung out her arms to the shadow-embroidered road over which they had just passed.

“Oh, why _don’t_ you come!” she whispered again intensely, with passionate reproach; and then, swiftly catching up to Lois, took the child from her, and again they stumbled on together, haltingly, to the accompaniment of that far-off brook.