Then in the slow night, I with a book and she with her stocking, my mother and I sat and waited. It would have been nothing very unusual if father had not returned at all that night. He sometimes did this, when business kept him at East Dene or Thorsby. On such occasions his orders were that we should lock up at eleven and go quietly to bed. Mother mostly let the maid, Grace Rigley, go home to her father's house at the other end of the village. Indeed, we were always glad when she did, for it let us have the house to ourselves, a pleasure which people who keep servants all the time never know. We gave father till twelve that night--why, I do not know--except that the hill road was an unusual one for him to travel. And what with the sloughs and quags, the peat-faces and green, shaking bogs, it was not at all a canny country after dark. I had to keep mother up, too. "Why did he wave his hand to me this mornin', Joe?" she said, more than once; "he didn't use to do that!" "Oh, he just saw you at the window, mother," I answered her, "and perhaps he thought you were a bit 'touched' at his not fancying his breakfast." "No, Joe," she cried quite sharply; "me 'touched'--with him--never! He knew better." "Touched" was, of course, our local word for offended. Then would mother knit a while, and run again to the door to listen. "I thought I heard him!" she said. "I am nearly sure." And there came a kind of white joy upon her face, curious in such a naturally rosy woman with cheeks like apples. But it was only some of the van horses moving restlessly or scraping their bedding in the stables. Now our house with its big, bricked yard, and all the different out-buildings--stores, coal-sheds, salt-pens, granaries, oil-cake house and cellars, occupied quite a big quadrangle. At the corner was Bob McKinstrey's room, through which was the only entrance excepting by the big gate. Bob had two doors, one opening out on a narrow lane, called Stye Alley, where poor people had kept pigs before my father and the local authority had made them clear off. On the other side, Bob's room looked into the yard, so that he could see at night that all was right. He could also enter the stable by a little side door, of which he alone had the key--that is, of course, excepting my father's master key, which he always carried about with him. Now I had locked the big double gate myself--the one by which the lorries and vans went and came. I had pushed home the bars. I had even gone round to see that Bob had closed his door behind him. The lock was a self-acting one, but Bob was apt to be careless. I knew that my father, when he came, would let himself in by the big yard gate, opening the right-hand half of it to bring in Dapple. Well, at twelve o'clock mother and I went to bed--I to sleep, but with half my clothes on me, in case father wanted anything when he should come. For if he did he made no allowances. Everybody had to be on the jump to get it.