A great gust of wind swept them furiously, and she clutched his arm and looked up at him with bewildering pleading in her eyes. But the boy turned his away and shook his head with a superior air of wisdom. “It’d never do, Bess,” said he. “Ye’re too young. Why, you ain’t seventeen yet! Ye might be fallin’ sick on my ’ands. We mightn’t ’ave enough to eat. A man can starve a bit, but a girl can’t—not one like you.” She sighed again, it was almost a moan, and lay her cheek against his once more. Then, suddenly, a tremor ran through her. They were standing within the edge of the wood with their backs to the open land beyond it. But in seeking his face she had turned hers towards the sky upon which low thorn-trees stood black, studding the rising ground. “What’s that there?” she whispered terrified. A cloud was hurrying across the moon and had laid a shadow on the whiteness of the open. “Where?” he asked, turning to follow her gaze. “There, there,” she repeated. “Didn’t ye see some one a-movin’ across behind the bushes? Charley, Charley, there’s father’s eyes everywheres—a-gleamin’ out at us all the time. Let’s get away from ’em—do!” The lad moved forward, though still holding her fast with one hand. “No, no,” said he reassuringly. “Ye’re a bit excited, that’s what it is,—ye fancy things. We should ha’ been bound to see any one move across the open there, you take my word for it.” She pressed closer to his side, but she trembled still. “I b’lieve father ’d kill me if he knowed as I’d been with ye to-night,” she whispered. “Ye don’t know what ’e’s like, father. It’s bad enough when ’e ’aven’t got the drink in ’im. ’E’s mad agin you and yours—downright crazy-mad. Oh, Charley,” she moaned again, clinging to him with trembling hands, “take me with ye, do, now! Don’t leave me wi’ father! I’d not be a bit o’ trouble to ye, that I wouldn’t! You try me. I’d rather live on a crust for weeks than stay ’ere alone. I’m frightened, I am. It seems as if somethin’ bad was bound to ’appen if ye go away and leave me. Take me along with ye, Charley!” The boy wavered. He too was frightened, though he would not have acknowledged it. He too, with the headlong recklessness of youth, would have adventured all to hold what he had won, to have what he wanted; but a vague sense of responsibility born of this new and strangely constraining love, an uncomprehended instinct to protect what clung to him, prevailed at last. He kissed her again, but it was no longer feverishly; he was as he had said—a man.