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 about like a bird gone astray. “The end the end” Her lips now and then whispered it aloud like an empty echo. She sped on mechanically, without thinking, always onward, onward, onward

The narrow ridge soon came to an end. Lucy entered the highway,—she recognized it,—it was the broad swath of dust that ran between fields, cut through a few villages, now went down, now again rose; here it turned, there it went straight, like an endless strip of cloth, and ran on and on, until at last it appeared on the horizon as a narrow, grey ribbon. The telegraph posts hummed their monotonous song. The rattle of wagons as they passed over it with slow, measured motion, resounded afar.—It was only a few weeks before that she had travelled over that road, full of happiness, to a new life

There below, behind her, lay that town. The curved roofs and the walls of the houses were plainly outlined against the