Her imagination had run away with her and she held the spruce grove in mortal dread after nightfall . But Marilla was inexorable . She marched the shrinking ghost-seer down to the spring and ordered her to proceed straightaway over the bridge and into the dusky retreats of wailing ladies and headless specters beyond . `` Oh , Marilla , how can you be so cruel ? '' sobbed Anne . `` What would you feel like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off ? '' `` I 'll risk it , '' said Marilla unfeelingly . `` You know I always mean what I say . I 'll cure you of imagining ghosts into places . March , now . '' Anne marched . That is , she stumbled over the bridge and went shuddering up the horrible dim path beyond . Anne never forgot that walk . Bitterly did she repent the license she had given to her imagination . The goblins of her fancy lurked in every shadow about her , reaching out their cold , fleshless hands to grasp the terrified small girl who had called them into being . A white strip of birch bark blowing up from the hollow over the brown floor of the grove made her heart stand still . The long-drawn wail of two old boughs rubbing against each other brought out the perspiration in beads on her forehead . The swoop of bats in the darkness over her was as the wings of unearthly creatures . When she reached Mr. William Bell 's field she fled across it as if pursued by an army of white things , and arrived at the Barry kitchen door so out of breath that she could hardly gasp out her request for the apron pattern . Diana was away so that she had no excuse to linger .
The dreadful return journey had XXXXX be faced .
about across after beyond in of over that to with