As the horse trotted along the hard road, rabbits scuttled across in the momentary lamplight. Hazel tied her handkerchief round Edward's head. All the windows were dark in Alderslea, except one faint dormer where an old woman was dying. They began to climb the lane that led up to the Mountain. Cattle looked over hedges, breathing hard with curiosity. In an upland field a flock of horned sheep were racing to and fro through a gap in the hedge, coughing and stamping at intervals, and looking, as the moon rose, like fantastic devils working sorcery with their own shadows. The lamps dimmed in the moonlight and the world seemed to widen infinitely, like life at the coming of love. The country lay below like a vast white mere, and the hill sloped vaguely to a silver sky. Vessons walked up the batch to ease the cob, and Edward looked down at Hazel and murmured: 'My little child!' 'Dunna talk,' said Hazel quickly; 'it's bad for 'ee!' She was afraid to break the magical silence, afraid that the new peace that came with Marston's presence would vanish like the moon in driving cloud, and that she would feel the dragging chain that pulled her back to Reddin. Edward was silent, puzzling over the question, Why had not Hazel asked for his help? Reddin must have seen her at least several times, must have persecuted her. He grew very uneasy. He must ask Hazel. They drew up before the white-sentried graveyard. Vessons went up the path and knocked at the silent house. Then he threw handfuls of white spar off a grave at the windows. The Minorca cockerel crew reedily. 'That's unlucky,' said Hazel. Mrs. Marston put her head out, very sleepy, and asked who it was. 'The conquering 'ero!' said Vessons, as Edward and Hazel came up the path, deeply shadowed. He got into the trap and drove off. 'Well, Undern'll be summat like itself again now,' he thought. 'It was a deal more peaceable without her, naughty girl!' thought Mrs. Marston as she sadly and lethargically put on her clothes. 'Well, Edward!' she exclaimed, when she came down in her crimson shawl with the ball fringe, 'here's a to-do! A minister of grace with a pocket-handkerchief round his head coming to his house in the dead of night with a wild old man. What's happened? Oh, my dear, is it your arteries? We wondered where you were, Hazel Marston!' 'I'm very shivery, mother,' Edward said. 'Something hot and sweet!' She bustled off. They were alone for the first time. 'Hazel, why didn't you tell me about this man? It was not kind or right of you.' 'There was nought to tell.' She fidgeted. 'But he must have seen you several times.' 'I was near telling you, but I thought you'd be angered.' 'Angry! With you! Oh, to think of you in such danger!' 'What danger?' 'Of things that, thank God, you never dream of. He forged that letter, I suppose? Or did he frighten you into writing it?' 'Ah.' 'But why did you ever go?' 'He pulled me up on the horse and took me.' 'The man's a savage.'