Such scenes, infinitely multiplied, bring that question to one's mind. A rabbit had dashed across the field close to them, and Reddin, relaxing his grip of her, had slashed at it with his stick. The look of its eye, white and staring, as it fled past her with insensate speed, came back to her now, and its convulsive roll over and recovery under the blow; and then the next blow--She had fled from the place. She thought again of what Sally had said, and a deep, smouldering rage was in her at this that he had done to her--this torture to which, according to Sally, he had quite consciously condemned her. Now that she knew him better, his daily acts of callousness tormented her. She would go. She was not wanted here. Sally had said so. There had been letters from her aunt, from Reddin's vicar, from the eldest Miss Clomber. In them all she was spoken of as the culprit for being at Undern. Well, she did not want to be at Undern. She would go. 'Well, Hazel, child, what's the matter?' asked Reddin, looking up from doing his quarterly accounts. 'Haven't you got a stocking to mend or a hair-ribbon to make?' 'A many and a many things be the matter.' 'Come here, and I'll see if I can put 'em right.' 'Harkee!' she said suddenly. 'It's like as if the jeath-pack was i' full cry down the wind.' 'Anyone would think you were off your head, Hazel. But come and tell me about the things that are the matter.' 'It's you as makes 'em the matter.' 'Oh, well, sulk as long as you like.' He returned angrily to his accounts. In the kitchen Vessons, very spondaic, was singing 'The Three Jolly Huntsmen.' In a few minutes Hazel rose and lit a candle. She looked, as she walked to the door in her limp muslin dress, like the spectre of some unhappy creature of the past. 'Where are you going?' asked Reddin. 'I thought to go to bed.' 'I'm not ready.' 'I'll go by my lonesome.' 'All right, sulk! It doesn't hurt me.' But it did hurt him. He wanted her to be fond of him, to cling to him. When at last he went up through the screaming house, he thought she was asleep. She lay still in the big bed and made no sign. Reddin was soon snoring, for accounts implied a strenuous intellectual effort. He would have left them to Vessons, but Vessons always had to notch sticks when he did them, and the manual labour ensuing on any accounts running into pounds would have seriously interfered with his other work. The cheese fair accounts usually took a long time. He could be heard saying in a stupendous voice, 'One and one and one--' until the chant ended in, 'Drat it! what _do_ 'em maken?' So Reddin did the accounts and slept the sleep of the intellectual worker afterwards. Hazel looked out from the tent of the bed canopy into the dark, creaking room and the darker, roaring night. She grew more afraid of Reddin and Undern as the hours dragged on.