Why interfere
with the hunger he would do nothing to forestall? How could she even
give such a man the sixpence which had been her father's last gift to
her?
But Annie was one to whom, in the course of her life, something strange
had not unfrequently happened, chiefly in the shape of what the common
mind would set aside as mere coincidence. I do not say _many_ such
things had occurred in her life; but, together, their strangeness and
their recurrence had caused her to remember every one of them, so that,
when she reviewed them, they seemed to her many. And now, with a shadowy
prevision, as it seemed, that something was going to happen, and with a
shadowy recollection that she had known beforehand it was coming,
something strange did take place. Of such things she used, in after
days, always to employ the old, stately Bible-phrase, "It came to pass";
she never said, "It happened."
As she walked along with her eyes on the ground, the withered leaves
caught up every now and then in a wild dance by the frolicsome wind, she
was suddenly aware of something among them which she could not identify,
whirling in the aerial vortex about her feet. Scarcely caring what it
was, she yet, all but mechanically, looked at it a little closer, lost
it from sight, caught it again, as a fresh blast sent it once more
gyrating about her feet, and now regarded it more steadfastly. Even then
it looked like nothing but another withered leaf, brown and wrinkled,
given over to the wind, and rustling along at its mercy.
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