Branch after branch the climber touched with unerring instinct and ran off noiselessly through the orchard to the south.
Kenny's heart throbbed with a ghastly fear.
It was Joan.
He knew what lay to the south beyond the orchard: woodlands and wildness, nothing else.

The fields Hughie cultivated stretched to the north from the kitchen windows.

There in the forest to the south where the river curved off at a tangent and flowed directly east, Brian had had his camp.

On farther Joan had never cared to go.

Where did she go now in the starlit darkness, climbing down the wistaria ladder with a cloak around her shoulders?
To what did she venture through the solitude of whispering trees and the gloom of the pine forest?
A lover's tryst?
Kenny sickened and choked.