This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

and bending her head before the little clouds of swirling dust, she urged old Dot to a faster and yet faster pace.

Master Tompkins's tavern at Freemantown, a few scattered farmhouses, with always the black swamp to her right and occasional spots of tall timber to her left as she rode along—this was what stormy darkness was swiftly eradicating from Sally's sight. She breathed a sigh as she turned at last on to the First Road. There were still four or five miles to Newark; but her journey ever seemed half accomplished, though in reality but a mile had been passed, when she reached this junction of the roads, where the Dark Lane, at this end of the Second Road, joined the First Road at what is now West Orange Center. The burial ground at her right now took the place of the great swamp, though the girl imagined she saw distant glimpses of the latter as she trotted along.

But now the storm was upon her! Furiously, with rain, hail, and much noise of wind and thunder, it broke with almost tropical violence after the day's heat. Sally was drenched to her skin at once, and as old Dot slipped and slid in the water-swept road, the girl realized miserably just how wild and impractical had been her impulse to find Jerry. No one passed her upon the road, for no one was abroad this dark night. Each isolated farmhouse, with its twinkling candle in the window, was an