"Hang it!" he thought disgustedly. "Here comes the rain." It came as though at his word, and with unbelievable suddenness. Thunder rolled; the breeze stiffened into a gale. Another drop fell upon his hat, and then another, and another. The young man came to an unwilling halt. But he immediately saw that further pursuit was, for the moment at least, out of the question. The storm broke with a violence strangely at variance with the calm of the earlier evening. The heavens opened and the floods descended. Shelter was to be found at once, if at all, but as he hesitated, he remembered suddenly that he had not passed a house in five minutes. In the same moment his eye fell upon a little cottage just ahead of him, unlighted and barely perceptible in the thick darkness, standing off the road not a hundred feet away. He made for it through the driving rain and wind, stepped upon the narrow porch, discovered immediately that it gave him no protection at all, and knocked loudly upon the shut door. He got no answer. Trying it with a wet hand he perceived that it was unlocked; and without more ado, he opened it and stepped inside. It was evidently, as he had surmised, an empty house. The hall was dark and very quiet. He leaned against the closed front door and dipped into his pockets for a match. Behind him the rain fell in torrents, and the turbulent wind dashed after it and hurled it against the streaming windows. It had turned in half an hour from a peaceful evening to a wild night, a night when all men of good sense and good fortune should be sitting secure and snug by their own firesides. And where, oh where, was Peter? Speculating gloomily on this and still exploring his pockets for a match, he heard a noise not far away in the dark, and knew suddenly that he was not alone. The next moment a voice floated to him out of the blackness near at hand, clear, but a little irresolute, faintly frightened. "Didn't some one come in? Who is there?" It was a woman's voice and a wholly charming one. There could hardly have been its match in Hunston. "What a very interesting town!" the young man thought. "People to talk to every way you turn." CHAPTER VI THE HERO TALKS WITH A LADY IN THE DARK Varney called reassuringly into the gloom: "I sincerely beg your pardon for bursting in like that. I--had no idea there was any one here." There was a second's pause. "N--no," said the pretty voice, hesitatingly. "You--you couldn't--of course." "But please tell me at once," he said, puzzled by this--"have I taken the unforgivable liberty of breaking into your house?" "My house?" And he caught something like bewildered relief in her voice. "Why--I--was thinking that I had broken into yours." Varney laughed, his back against the door.