Why it should have
been, Mrs. Peckaby could not have told, then or afterwards; but the
positive conviction that Brother Jarrum _had_ been false, that the story
of sending for her on a white donkey had only been invented to keep her
quiet, fixed itself in her mind in that moment in the lonely wood. She
sunk down amidst the trees and sobbed bitterly.
But all the tears combined that the world ever shed could not bring her
nearer to New Jerusalem, or make her present situation better. After
awhile she had the sense to remember that. She rose from the ground,
turned her gown up over her shoulders, found her way out of the wood,
and set off on her walk back again in a very humble frame of mind,
arriving home as the clock was striking two.
She could make nobody hear. She knocked at the door, she knocked at the
window, gently at first, then louder; she called and called, but there
came no answer. Some of the neighbours, aroused by the unwonted
disturbance, came peeping at their windows. At length Peckaby opened
his; thrusting his head out at the very casement from which Mrs.
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