more than the far-seeing; that limitation, and not comprehensiveness, is needed for striking a blow.
The half-mile stood now before the sick and weary woman like a stolid Juggernaut. It was an impassive King of her world. The road here ran across a level plateau with only a bank on either side. She surveyed the wide space, the lights, herself, sighed, and lay down on the bank.
Never was ingenuity exercised so sorely as the traveller here exercised hers. Every conceivable aid, method, stratagem, mechanism, by which these last desperate eight hundred yards could be overpassed by a human being unperceived, was revolved in her busy brain, and dismissed as impracticable. She thought of sticks, wheels, crawling—she even thought of rolling. But the exertion demanded by either of these latter two was greater than to walk erect. The faculty of contrivance was worn out. Hopelessness had come at last.
"No further!" she whispered, and closed her eyes.
From the stripe of shadow on the opposite side of the way a portion of shade seemed to detach itself and move into isolation upon the pale white of the road. It glided noiselessly towards the recumbent woman.
She became conscious of something touching
