Читать книгу The Stone Field - Martha Ostenso - Страница 14

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Easter Monday dawned in a sky that was a washed and hollow shell. Jo had gone out as soon as the breakfast dishes were done and walked alone along the lake’s edge. Then she cut through the woods to the corner of the field to the place she remembered. At first she thought that perhaps she had been mistaken in the clump of dried mullein she had marked yesterday near the rabbit’s nest. But soon she became sure with a stricken, awful conviction, for in the damp soil around the empty, forlorn hollow were strong crows’ tracks and tiny tufts of fur that you might have mistaken for thistledown had you not known. Jo gave a muffled scream and, with eyes tight shut against tears of horror, ran blind and frantic down the length of the wood-path. The narrow road wound deep in thickset, somberly tall firs where she stumbled out upon it at last. It did not matter which way she went upon that road, but back to where she had come from she would never go—for that place would be dappled forever now with the new shadows of dread. In a stand of last year’s dried weeds she sank to her knees and sobbed convulsively. This was what life was—this opening of a gold, blind door upon a black corridor of terror!