Hither came Joan. Her patchwork of faith and Nature-worship was a live
thing to her now, and she found no difficulty in reconciling the sweet
saint-stories heard in childhood from her dead mother's lips, with the
beautiful and fair exposition of truth which "Mister Jan" found written
large upon the world by Nature in spring-time.
It was half-past four o'clock when she trudged through Madron to see the
gray church and the little gray houses all sleeping under the gray sky. She
plodded on up the hill past the gaunt workhouse which stands at the top of
it; and what had seemed soft, sweet repose among the cottage homes, felt
like cold death beneath these ashy walls. To Joan, the workhouse was a word
of shame unutterable. Those among whom she lived would hurl the word
against enemies as a prophecy of the utmost degradation. She shivered as
she passed, and was sad, knowing that a whole world of poverty, failure,
sorrow, regret, was hidden away in that cold, still pile. But the hand of
sleep lay softly there; only a sick soul or two stirred, the paupers were
the equal of princes till a hoarse bell brought them back out of blessed
unconsciousness.
Bars of light streaked the east, and Joan, only stopping at the hill crest
to see dawn open silver eyes on the sea, hastened inland through silent,
dewy fields. Presently a fence and wall cut civilization from the wild land
of the coomb, and the girl proceeded where grass-grown cart-ruts wound
among furze and heather and the silver coils of new-born bracken just
beginning to peep up above the dead fern of last year.
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