It cost them both an effort, and Carrie was some little time lighting the lamp when they had accomplished it. Then Eveline Annersly sank into the nearest chair, with her arm about the shoulders of the girl who knelt beside her. Even with the windows shut, the lamplight flickered, and, when it fell upon her, Carrie's face showed set and white. "Ah," she said, "the wheat! It will all be cut down by morning, and Charley ruined." It was a minute or two before Eveline Annersly quite understood her, for there was just then a deafening crash of thunder, and, after it, the stout wooden building appeared to rock at the onslaught of an icy wind that struck through every crevice with a stinging chill. The hail roared on walls and shingled roof with a bewildering din. Then the uproar slackened a little, and, as she glanced towards the melting ice which had beaten into the room, it seemed to her scarcely possible that Leland's crop could have escaped disaster. She had never seen hail like that in England; in fact, it scarcely seemed hail at all, but big lumps of ice, and the crash of it upon the roof was like the roar upon a beach of surf-rolled stones. The sound of it, and the wild wailing of the gale, sapped her courage; so she understood the strained look in Carrie's eyes. There are times when men, as well as women, stand appalled by the elemental fury, and, shaking off all restraint that a complex civilisation may have laid upon them, become wholly human and primitive again. Carrie was half crouching at her aunt's feet, gazing up at her with wild, fierce eyes. Eveline Annersly shuddered a little as she glanced at her. "Will the house stand?" she gasped. The girl's laugh rang harshly through the roar of the hail. "I don't know. What does that matter, anyway? Can't you understand? The wheat will all be cut down. I have ruined Charley." Then there was a lull for a minute or two, and Carrie, reaching up a hand, gripped her companion's arm. "Did you ever hear how much I cost my husband?" she said. Terrified as she was, Eveline Annersly started at the question. It was not expressed delicately, but, after all, there was no doubt that the girl's marriage had been more or less a matter of bargaining. "Of course not," she said. "I don't know, either, but I'm sure it was ever so much," and Carrie's fingers trembled on her arm, though her eyes were fierce. "In one way, I am glad it was. I like to feel that he was willing to offer everything that was his for me. It isn't in the least degrading to belong to Charley Leland, however I came into his possession. Not in the least. How could it be? Still, once it seemed horrible even to think of it." She stopped a minute with a little indrawing of her breath. "Besides, I am glad in another way, because, if he is really ruined, I am going to get all I cost him back again. Jimmy and my father would call it a loan."