‘He be gone to fetch summat, very like,’ remarked the farmer as he restored his pipe to his mouth. But after smoking and listening a little longer, and marking that the pacing to and fro continued without intermission, he jerked his thumb upwards, nodded, and said, ‘He bain’t a-comin’ back.’ Then, after pausing a moment to ruminate over this circumstance, he made up his mind to the inevitable, tapped his pipe upon the hob, extinguished the lamp, and went upstairs to bed. And long after he was sunk in dreamless slumbers those hasty footsteps might have been heard in the adjoining room, pacing up and down, up and down, like the restless tread of a caged beast. Richard was not the only one who spent an unquiet night. Rosalie, too, could find no rest for her aching heart. After some hours of feverish tossing she rose, dressed in the dim grey light that was just stealing over the world, and seated herself by the open window. She could meditate here without risk of being disturbed, for the sun would not rise for an hour and more; and even the earliest of her men would not appear until some time after dawn. With her chin resting on her hand, she hearkened vaguely to the succession of sounds which betokened the awakening of Nature. The cock had crowed long before she had left her uneasy pillow; the young sparrows had been chirping while she had clothed her weary frame; but now the cuckoo’s note was sounding faintly from a neighbouring copse, and the starlings were chattering in their nests on the ivied wall. The grey veil was being gradually withdrawn from the face of the earth, but even yet familiar objects were only half revealed, and the most well-known had a strange and unreal look. The first sunbeam had not yet struck across the sky when Rosalie, whose eyes had been absently fixed upon the irregular line of hedge which marked the approach to the barton, saw a dark object moving slowly along it, and presently into the open space before her gate there stepped the figure of a man. She knew what man it was even before he had vaulted the locked gate and taken up his stand beneath her window. She would have given worlds to close this window and hasten out of sight, but a spell seemed to be laid upon her, and she could neither move nor speak, only gaze downward with dilated frightened eyes. ‘You are there?’ said Richard, looking up with a face as drawn and white as her own. ‘Thank God! I wanted to see you before I go. I wanted to say Good-bye.’ The power of speech returned to her, and she leaned forth impulsively with a faint cry. ‘Going! You are going?’ ‘Yes, I am going. Is it not the only thing I can do? Do you think I can bear to sit at his table and take his pay, and know that I am a traitor to him in my heart?’ Rosalie did not speak; but Richard, gazing upwards, saw the clasp of her hands tighten, as they rested on the sill, till the nails and knuckles showed white.