In fact, she was at the point of a nervous collapse, when slowly from out the void there rose to her view and pierced its way into her mind the outline of the door upon which she had been steadily looking but without seeing it till now.

Why did she start as it thus took on shape before her?
There was nothing strange or mysterious about it.

It led nowhere; it hid nothing, unless it was the yard upon which it directly opened.
But that yard! She remembered it well.

It was unlike any other she had ever seen in this country or her own.

It was small and semicircular; it was shut in by a high board fence except at the extreme end, where it was met by a swinging bridge topping a forty-foot chasm.