On she went among the gorse, between the firs, and over the clumps of budding heather, a limp black figure in the misty twilight. She had no definite reason for supposing he would return that way; but she knew it to be a short cut from the Liphook direction, and some strange instinct seemed to be sending her on: she did not hesitate or falter, but just obeyed it. The pathway was very narrow, the wet growth on either side brushed her skirts as she passed by—down and down—lower and lower—towards the valley. On the other side, a quarter of a mile away, she could see the little thatched shed the children called their “house,” where perhaps in past days a cow had been tethered. There was not a sign of Alfred. “Perhaps he is a little farther on, over the ridge,” she said, and sped on. A miserable aching was upon her; she had been out of doors many hours; she was wet and cold through and through. Every moment the long grasses and the dead bracken of a past year swept over her feet. The mist stole up to her closer and closer. The drops fell from the leaves above on to her shoulders. “He must be so cold and wet,” she thought; “I know he will make his cough worse; I am glad I kept the lozenges in my pocket.” She hesitated at the bottom of the valley for a moment, and then began the upward path. “I know he wants me,” she said aloud, with an almost passionate note in her feeble voice; “I can feel that he wants me.” She looked through the straggling firs that dotted the ground over which she was now making her way. Still, there was not a sign of Alfred. Only the trees and the undergrowth, sodden with the long day’s rain. Suddenly there was the sound of a woman’s laughter. She stopped, petrified. It came from the little thatched shed twenty yards away. The side of the shed was towards her and only the front of it was open, so that she could not see who was within it. But she knew that two people were there. One was a woman, and something told her that the other was Alfred Wimple. For a minute she could not stir. Then, as if it had been waiting for a signal, the rain began to fall, with a soft, swishing sound, upon the thatched roof of the shed, upon Aunt Anne’s thin cashmere shawl, upon all the drooping vegetation. The mistiness grew deeper, and from the distances the night began to gather. The black figure standing in the mist knew that a few yards off there was hidden from her that which meant life or death. She went a little nearer to the shed, but her feet almost failed her, her heart stood still, a sickening dread had laid hold of her. “I will go round and face them,” she thought, and dragged herself up to the shed. But as she reached the corner she heard Alfred Wimple’s voice— “You know it’s only for her money that I stay with the old woman, Caroline.” She stopped, and rested her head and hands against the back and sides of the shed, from sheer fright at what was coming next. “Well, but you don’t give me any of it,” the woman answered.