He staggered away along the lane by which he had come, hatless, his coat torn, his throat open, and the rain, that had now begun to fall, beating upon his fevered head. Footsteps were hurrying towards the spot where he had encountered her he loved and his rival. But he heard them not; he only staggered on--on into the gathering night, with a vague feeling that he must go away somewhere to find rest for his aching brain-- anywhere to be away from her. One moment he stopped, for he heard Sage's voice raised in a loud cry; but it was not repeated, and with a bitter laugh, he now tore on at headlong speed, running not from pursuit, but from sheer desire for action. On and on, quite heedless of the direction he took, so that he might get away--onward and onward through the wind and rain. PART ONE, CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT. A WILLING INVALID. The footsteps heard as Luke Ross hurried away were those of the Churchwarden. He had been round the farm according to his custom when his after-dinner pipe was ended, and then spent his usual amount of time over scraper and mat, getting rid of the superabundant earth that always seemed to cling to his boots. "Shortest day, mother," he said, entering the long parlour where Mrs Portlock was seated watching the fire, with her knitting upon her knees. "Be dusk directly. Sage come in?" "No, not yet. It is hardly her time," was the reply. "But you need not fidget about her." "Wasn't fidgeting about her," said the Churchwarden, shortly, for the meaning tone in his wife's words annoyed him. All that afternoon he had been thinking of Luke Ross, and it had struck him that it was just upon the young man's time for paying a visit home. "And then we shall be having him up here, and he'll learn all about Sage. Hang me if I think that I ought to have listened to parson as I did!" These thoughts had come to him over and over again, troubling him more than he cared to own, for there was something frank and manly about Luke Ross that he had always liked, and in spite of his own uncompromising refusal to sanction any engagement, he did not feel happy in his mind about the treatment the young man had received. "Look here, mother," he said, sharply, after standing at the front door for a few minutes, watching for Sage's return, "this is your doing." "What is my doing?" she replied; "but there, for goodness' sake, Joseph, do come in or stop out. You've done nothing but open and shut that door." The Churchwarden shut the front door with a bang, and strode up to the fire. "I say this is your doing about Sage, and I don't half like it after all." "There, there, there!" she cried. "I wish to goodness you'd mind the farm, and leave women and their ways alone. What in the world do you understand about such things?" "I don't think we've been doing right," he said; "and I'm afraid that no good will come of it."