When Kit is banished from teaching the dame school with Mercy, and the future of the school itself is in jeopardy because of her actions, she flees blindly down the roadway, "past the Meeting House...past the houses where her pupils lived...she did not stop until she reached the Great Meadow", the wild, marshy area below the settlement where only the Quaker widow, Hannah Tupper lives. Kit had not intentionally planned to go there, but "something deep within her had chosen...(the Meadow as her) destination". There, Kit throws herself onto the tall grass and sobs wretchedly.
When Kit has exhausted herself, she turns over and looks at the blue sky above, and is filled with a sense of peace. Sensing that she is not alone, she starts up and finds a strange, wizened old woman watching her from nearby. The woman is Hannah Tupper, whom some people in the community consider to be a witch. Kit is at first frightened, but Hannah speaks gently to her, telling her that she did well to come to the Meadow, because "there is always a cure (there) when the heart is troubled". Hannah takes Kit to her humble home and gives her a small meal to lift her spirits before she returns to the world, and Kit finds herself at such ease with the woman that she pours her heart out to her. Like Hannah herself, and an unnamed friend before her, Kit finds peace and restoration in the loving kindness the Quaker woman unreservedly bestows on her (Chapter 9).
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