Bess did not sleep that night, but, wrapping herself in her cloak, lay down to think. The moon was sinking towards the west, flooding the little room with silvery light, and making the girl’s face seem white and wistful in the gloom. From the bed, Bess could see the towering woods melting away into dreamlands of mist and magic. All Pevensel seemed asleep, with no wind stirring. The pines about the cottage stood black and motionless under the stars. From below Bess could catch the quiet laughter of the stream in the valley running under the moonlight amid the trees. She lay there a long while in a stupor of fierce and rebellious thought, the sense of her own loneliness deepened by the vast silence of the night. Despite her woman’s fury against Dan, she shivered and felt cold, and even the shadowy magic of Pevensel seemed full of treachery and whispering horror. Not till another morrow would she meet Jeffray at Holy Cross, and she had much to fear from Isaac and his son. As she lay on the bed with the moonlight flooding in, the sudden, shrill cry of a bird taken by a weasel in the woods trembled up out of the silence. Bess shuddered and started up from the pillow. She caught a warning in this wild thing’s cry, an omen vouchsafed to her by savage Pevensel. White and cold about the lips, she rose up suddenly, went to the window, and looked out. She could see the broken lattice lying at the foot of the wall, and even imagined that the stains of Dan’s blood were visible upon the grass. How she hated and feared the man! The thought of his coarse face and great, heavy hands strengthened her in her passion to escape from the forest. Turning back into the room, she put one of Jeffray’s pistols into her bosom and hid the other under the mattress of the bed. Then she buckled on her best shoes, hooked up her cloak, and drew the hood forward over her face. Very softly she crept down the stairs into the kitchen, and listened for a moment outside Ursula’s door to discover whether the old woman was awake or no. She heard the sound of deep and regular breathing within, and knew that the dame was fast asleep. The embers of the fire still glowed on the hearth, and the kitchen reeked of Isaac’s tobacco. Creeping to the cottage door, she took down the bar noiselessly and shot back the bolts. Without the world seemed built up of magic, the moonlight flooding down upon the orchards and the woods. Bess shut the door gently, passed through the garden, and half ran across the open grass-land betwixt the cottage and the forest. She took the path leading up towards the heath about the Beacon Rock, and, gathering her cloak round her, fled away into the moon-streaked shadows.