"
Yet Joe Yare, fresh from two years in the penitentiary, was not exactly
the person whom society usually welcomes with open arms. Lois had a
vague suspicion of this, perhaps; for, as she hobbled along the path,
she added to her own assurance of his "stiddiness" earnest explanations
to Joel of how he had a place in the Croft Street woollen-mills, and
how Dr. Knowles had said he was as ready a stoker as any in the
furnace-rooms.
The sound of her weak, eager voice was silent presently, and nothing
broke the quiet and cold of the night. Even the morning, when it came
long after, came quiet and cool,--the warm red dawn helplessly smothered
under great waves of gray cloud. Margaret, looking out into the thick
fog, lay down wearily again, closing her eyes. What was the day to her?
Very slowly the night was driven back. An hour after, when she lifted
her head again, the stars were still glittering through the foggy arch,
like sparks of brassy blue, and the sky and hills and valleys were one
drifting, slow-heaving mass of ashy damp. Off in the east a stifled red
film groped through. It was another day coming; she might as well get
up, and live the rest of her life out;--what else had she to do?
Whatever this night had been to the girl, it left one thought sharp,
alive, in the exhausted quiet of her brain: a cowardly dread of the
trial of the day, when she would see him again.
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