"I wadna be in your shoon for a hundred pounds a week—na, no for a' the gowd in Barnbogle Hoose," the respectable shopkeeper told him each time he came in. "The General's servants never leave him. Na, they a' dee—and generally michty suddenly at the tail o' the day. And naebody kens in what mainner they come by their ends. I'm thinking that when he gets tired o' them, he juist locks them up in yin o' his iron rooms and then—lets them bide there!" But Cleg was not frightened, as the good grocer had hoped. He bought his red herrings, his bacon, and his eggs; and he carried them peacefully back to the brick building in the rear of the vast blind wall of Barnbogle House, to be ready when the General should come again from his room. "A pound a week was never easier earned," said practical and unimaginative Cleg. Vara felt that this time of bliss was too sweet to last. Yet, with the fatalism of those bred up in the midst of misery, she was content to bask carelessly in the sunshine of present prosperity. She was like a bird taking its fill of the warmth and delight of summer, without a thought of blusterous winter winds and the shrewd pinch of nipping skies. But one night, when the year was already drawing to its end, and November was expiring in a clear silver-grey rime of frost, Vara was locking up the outhouses at Sandyknowes in the gloaming. She had already been at the byre, and had given the cows their last bit of fodder, and a pat each on the flank as she passed—a pat so remote from the sentient and operative end of the animal, that it seemed almost as ridiculous as caressing the porch of a church in order to please the parson. Nevertheless, Vara never omitted the ceremony on any consideration. Yet this particular evening, all the time she was foddering the cattle Vara had a strange consciousness that she heard voices somewhere over towards the marsh. The crisp air of coming frost sharpened her hearing, and as the stars pricked themselves out, the whole night rang like a bell with unknown and far-away sounds. Voices Vara certainly did hear. But she thought that it might be only a lad and lass on their way to the dancing-school, or a herd talking aloud to his dog for company as he went homeward. Yet the sounds did not resemble any of those with which Vara had been recently acquainted. Some awful dread, inherited from a former and a more terrible existence, returned upon her. Her breath came hard and quick. She grew first hot and then cold, as she stole down by the barn-end to listen. She was nearer to the voices there. The murmur of them came more instant and terrible up from the swamp above which Sandyknowes sat on its hill. Vara stole on tiptoe nearer and nearer. The old hut in the hollow was a deserted cot-house of the General's—a mere but-and-ben—which Muckle Alick had been accustomed to use for storing old railway sleepers in. For these are the winter fuel of men who work upon the railway.