It was dark.

The May days are short in the north lands of the Scheldt.
She had her little winter cloak of frieze and her wooden shoes and her little white cap with the sunny curls rippling out of it in their pretty rebellion.

She had her little lantern too; and her bundle, and she had put a few fresh eggs in her basket, with some sweet herbs and the palm-sheaf that Father Francis had blessed last Easter; for who could tell, she thought, how ill he might not be, or how poor?
She hardly gave a look to the hut as she ran by its garden gate; all her heart was on in front, in the vague far-off country where he lay sick unto death.
She ran fast through the familiar lanes into the city.

She was not very sure where Paris was, but she had the name clear and firm, and she knew that people were always coming and going thence and thither, so that she had no fear she should not find it.
She went straight to the big, busy, bewildering place in the Leopold quarter where the iron horses fumed every day and night along the iron ways.

She had never been there before, but she knew it was by that great highway that the traffic to Paris was carried on, and she knew that it would carry people also as well.
There were bells clanging, lights flashing, and crowds pushing and shouting, as she ran up--a little gray figure, with the lantern-spark glimmering like any tiny glow-worm astray in a gas-lit city.
"To Paris ?" she asked, entreatingly, going where she saw others going, to a little grated wicket in a wall.
"Twenty-seven francs--quick!" they demanded of her.