Oh, the joy of the moment when the great white house which had already become so hateful to her was obscured among the trees behind her!  She had some idea of the road which she had traversed the night before.  Behind her were all her troubles.  In front the avenue gate, Bedsworth, and freedom.  She would send both a telegram and a letter to Dr. Dimsdale, and explain to him her exact situation.  If the kind-hearted and energetic physician once knew of it, he would take care that no harm befell her.  She could return then, and face with a light heart the worst which her guardian could do to her.  Here was the avenue entrance now, the high lichen-eaten stone pillars, with the battered device upon the top.  The iron gate between was open.  With a glad cry she quickened her pace, and in another moment would have been in the high-road, when—­

“Now then, where are you a-comin’ to?” cried a gruff voice from among the bushes which flanked the gate.

The girl stopped, all in a tremble.  In the shadow of the trees there was a camp-stool, and on the camp-stool sat a savage-looking man, dressed in a dark corduroy suit, with a blackened clay pipe stuck in the corner of his mouth.  His weather-beaten mahogany face was plentifully covered with small-pox marks, and one of his eyes was sightless and white from the effects of the same disease.  He rose now, and interposed himself between her and the gate.

“Sink me, if it ain’t her,” he said slowly, surveying her from head to foot.  “I were given to understand that she was a spanker, an’ a spanker she be.”  With this oracular remark he took a step back and surveyed Kate again with his one eye.

“My good man,” she said, in a trembling voice, for his appearance was far from reassuring, “I wish to go past and to get to Bedsworth.  Here is a shilling, and I beg that you will not detain me.”

Her companion stretched out a very dirty hand, took the coin, spun it up in the air, caught it, bit it, and finally plunged it into the depths of his trouser pockets.  “No road this way, missy,” he said; “I’ve given my word to the guv’nor, and I can’t go back from it.”

“You have no right to detain me,” Kate cried angrily.  “I have good friends in London who will make you suffer for this.”

“She’s a-goin’ to flare up,” said the one-eyed man; “knock me helpless, if she ain’t!”

“I shall come through!” the girl cried in desperation.  She was only a dozen yards from the lane which led to freedom, so she made a quick little feminine rush in the hope of avoiding this dreadful sentinel who barred her passage.  He caught her round the waist, however, and hurled her back with such violence that she staggered across the path, and would have fallen had she not struck violently against a tree.  As it was, she was badly bruised and the breath shaken out of her body.

“She has flared up,” said the one-eyed man, removing his pipe from his lips.  “Blow me asunder if she bean’t a rustler!” He brought his camp-stool from the side of the pillar and, planting it right in the centre of the gateway, sat down upon it again.  “You see, missy,” he remarked, “it’s no manner o’ use.  If you did get out it would only be to be put in a reg’lar ’sylum.”