Dancing having recommenced, several came round Eliza requesting her hand; but she answered hurriedly that she could not take part in this dance, but would in the next. She had things to look after just now, and must leave them for a little while. Saying which, she quietly quitted the room.
A few minutes after, a slight figure wrapped in a cloak might have been seen gliding through the farm-stead. On emerging by the back-gate on the road, it stood still for a moment and looked behind. The pale moonbeams gleamed on the face; but so blanched were the features, so altered the expression, that even had any of her friends been near they might almost have failed to recognise Eliza. With a shiver, as if the chill wind pierced her after the heated room she had left, she drew the hood of her cloak closer over her face and began to speed rapidly along. Nor did she pause or again look around till, some distance from home, she at last stopped, breathless, at the gate of a potato-field. For a minute or two she stood before it, as if irresolute.
'Shall I go back without trying it after all?' she murmured. 'No; I will go on, and see what comes of it.'
She entered the field and began to walk slowly across the ridges, counting them as she went till she had numbered TWELVE; then she stood still and listened intently. The wind, which was high, swept over the wide unsheltered space around. Was that its murmur she heard? She held her breath. Low moans and sobbing sighs seemed to mingle with it. Surely no wind ever wailed with such human anguish as that. Louder and clearer it rose, swelling on the breeze, full of more piercing passionate sorrow. She remained rooted to the spot, terror-stricken, her heart almost ceasing to beat. The sounds seemed to come along the ground. As she listened, a slender figure rose up slowly, as if from off the earth, confronting her in the uncertain light, and gazing upon her with a cold sorrowful eye. Shrieking, Eliza rushed back, stumbling and sometimes falling over the ridges as she ran. How she gained the road, she scarcely knew, but she found herself flying along it, with the cry of 'Doomed, doomed!' ringing in her ears. She had heard it, low and despairing, as she left the field, as if wrung from some soul in mortal terror and anguish; now it seemed repeated by a hundred voices exclaiming: 'Doomed, doomed!' She flew before it, pressing her hands to her ears, to shut out the sound.