Her mare had also gained the bank near the same point she had, and stood looking at her with a world of wonder at the whole night's experience in her great brown eyes.
"Poor thing," said Rachel sympathetically.

"This is only the beginning.
Heaven knows what we won't have to go through with before the sun rises." She tried to mount, but her watery garments were too much for her agility, and with the wet skirts fettering her limbs she began toiling painfully over the spongy, plowed ground, in search of a stump or a rock.

She thought she saw many around her, but on approaching one after another found they were only large cotton plants, with a boll or two of ungathered cotton on them, which aided the darkness in giving them their deceptive appearance.

She prevented herself from traveling in a circle, by remembering this aptitude of benighted travelers, and keeping her eye steadily fixed on a distant camp-fire.

When she at last came to the edge of the field she had to lean against the fence for some minutes before she could recover from her fatigue sufficiently to climb upon it.
While she sat for a minute there she heard some cocks, at a neighboring farm-house, crow the turn of night.
"It is midnight," she said feverishly, "and I have only begun the journey.