noon
She had learnt from a gipsy woman , with whom she had walked in company for some hours , how to carry her child across her back , slung in her shawl . So , with her breast bare to the storm , she fought her way over the high bleak downs , glad and happy when the boy ceased his wailing , and lay warm and sheltered behind her , swathed in every poor rag she could spare from her numbed and dripping body . Late on a wild rainy night she reached Exeter , utterly penniless , and wet to the skin . She had had nothing to eat since noon , and her breast was failing from want of nourishment and over-exertion . Still it was only twenty miles further . Surely , she thought , God had not saved her through two hundred such miles , to perish at last . The child was dry and warm , and fast asleep , if she could get some rest in one of the doorways in the lower part of the town , till she was stronger she could fight her way on to Drumston ; so she held on to St. Thomas 's , and finding an archway drier than the others sat down , and took the child upon her lap .