I hate her, she said to herself, as she set her teeth and drove her nails into her palms. I saw I saw her looking at me with triumph flashing out of her wicked eyes; and Ill kill her, Ill poison her, before she shall beat me again. If he would only get well if he would only get well.
A slight rustle on her left made her start, but it was only a blackbird bursting through the dense mass of tangled growth that rose like a vast hedge on either side of the winding track, from which the wanton brambles and lithe boughs kept thrusting across young shoots like friendly hands to grasp each other and join in claiming the rugged lane as their own by conquests right.
A little further on a snake that had been sunning itself on a stump raised its head, uttered a low hiss, and glided rapidly away amidst the dense undergrowth; while again, a few yards further on, she came upon a short thick adder, lying right in her path, and apparently very careless about leaving it.
It was remarkable now that Anne Beckley displayed no fear of the wild animals she met. She had started at the blackbirds rustle, believing that she was watched, but on seeing the reptiles, now that there was no Sir Mark to whom she might cling for support, she broke off a slight hazel branch, and cut sharply at the adder where it lay; and as it raised its head and struck at her she cut it again and again till she had disabled it, and ended by crushing its head in the earth.
Then throwing aside her stick she hastened on, but the exertion had made her warm, and seating herself upon a mossy part of the bank she stayed to rest in the cool damp shade, beneath a great oak-tree.
Before she had been seated there many minutes she became aware of a slight movement in the grass, and, as she watched, a long lithe weasel bounded into sight, stopped, with its neck stretched up and head erect, watching her; but as she did not move the animal ran up the bank and crept down a mouse-hole, so small that it seemed impossible for it to have passed.
There was something about that weasel that attracted Anne, who remained
watching the little hole, till all at once a mouse in an apparent state of collapse was thrust out, the neck and body of the weasel followed, and away the long thin creature bounded into the thick grass and disappeared.
A minute later there came a robin to settle upon a twig, and watch her with its great round eyes, but the loud chink-chink of a blackbird sent the robin away, and the orange-billed bird hopped down into the lane and began poking and peering about among the leaves till it secured a snail, in the dampest, darkest, spot, which unfortunate it bore into the path and hammered upon a stone till the shell was broken, when the soft-bodied snail was daintily picked out, swallowed, and the blackbird flew away.
Almost before Mistress Anne had noticed that the blackbird was gone, the robin came back to gaze at the intruder, with its head on one side, and then made a flit to where the leaves upon the moist bank had been disturbed by the blackbird. Here the robins quick eyes had spied out a large lobworm hastily making its escape, under the impression that there was danger below.
This long worm the robin seized and bore, writhing and twining, in its bill to the path, where it set down its prize, but only to seize it again and give it a series of fierce nips from end to end, accompanying each nip with a sharp shake to stop the twining, which, however, was not entirely done, for when the little redbreast seized its victim by the head there was a slight undulating motion going on a movement continued as the bird began rapidly to gulp it down.
This feat seemed to fascinate Mistress Anne, who watched the last bit of tail disappear, the robin having succeeded in taking down a worm nearly twice its own length; such a feat, indeed, as a man would have accomplished had he made a meal of a serpent some ten or eleven feet long, swallowing it, writhing and twisting, whole.
How cruel Nature is! said Mistress Anne, in a low thoughtful voice, and as she spoke there was a strange light in her eyes. Everything for its own pleasure seems to kill what it wills. Why should I not be cruel too?
She laughed then a curious unpleasant laugh; and rising, the robin flitted away over the low undergrowth, apparently none the heavier for its meal, and there was a sharp rustle and a bound in the grass.
Mistress Anne Beckley seemed now to be too much occupied by her thoughts to pay much heed to the objects she passed as she walked slowly on.
Once more she said softly, Why should not I be cruel too? Then she laughed in a very unpleasant way, and half-closed her eyes.
About a mile farther, and in a very solitary place by an opening in the sandstone rock that rose in front, she stopped before a low, thatched cottage, glanced to right and left hastily, and then opening the rough gate, passed between a couple of rows of old-fashioned flowers, pushed the door, and entered the low-ceiled, homely room, with its bricked floor and open fireplace, where, in spite of the heat, a few sticks of wood were smouldering between the firedogs.