CHAPTER XXI.
FORGIVENESS.
Bess Thompson started off on her way to her desolate home, almost heart-broken, and with such a wrathful resentment against Stephen, and Martha, and Tim, as seemed to blot out all memory of the lessons she had been learning from Miss Anne since the little child's death.

She could never bear to go near them, or speak to them again, since they had sworn against her father; and had not he been good to them when Stephen was ill, often sparing her to watch with Martha, as well as helping to make up his wages?
If this was their religion, she did not care to have it; for nobody else in Botfield would have done the same.

And now she might as well give up all thoughts of getting to heaven, where little Nan and her baby sister were; for there would be nobody to care for her, and she would be obliged to go back to all her old ways.
These were her bitter thoughts as she walked homewards alone, for Stephen was gone up to the doctor's house to inquire after the master and Miss Anne, and the others were waiting for him in Longville.

She heard their voices after a while coming along the turnpike road, and walking quickly as if to overtake her; so she turned aside into a field, and hid herself under a hedge that they might pass by.

She crouched down low upon the grass, and covered her red and smarting eyes from the sunshine with her shawl, and then she listened for their footsteps to die away in the distance.