And at night, after supper, Rachel stood on the front steps looking into a wide starry heaven, moonless, cold, and still. Betty and Jenny had just gone up to bed. Janet was in the kitchen, putting the porridge for the morrow's breakfast which she had just made into the hay-box, which would keep it steaming all night. But she would soon have done work. The moment seemed to have come. Rachel walked into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. The supper had been cleared away and the table on which they had eaten it shone spotlessly clean and bare. The fire would soon be raked out for the night, and Janet would lay the breakfast before she left the kitchen. Everything was in the neatest possible order, and the brilliant polish of a great stew-pan hanging on the wall particularly caught the eye. Janet was humming to herself--one of the war tunes--when Rachel entered. "Janet, I want to speak to you." Janet looked up--startled. And yet something in her was not startled! She had been strangely expectant all these days. It seemed to her she had already seen Rachel come in like that--had already heard her say those words. She shut up the hay-box, and came gently forward. "Here, Rachel?" "You've nearly done?" "In a few minutes. If you'll go into the sitting-room, I'll join you directly." And while she hurried through the rest of her work, her mind was really running forward in prophecy. She more or less knew what she was going to hear. And as she closed the kitchen door behind her there was in her a tremulous sense as though of some sacred responsibility. Rachel was crouching over the fire as usual, and Janet drew up a stool beside her, and laid a hand on her knee. "What is it?" Rachel turned. "I told you one secret, Janet, the other day. Now this is another. And it's--" She flushed, and broke off, beginning again after a moment--"I didn't mean to tell you, or any one. I can't make up my mind whether I'm bound to or not. But I want you to advise me, Janet. I'm awfully troubled." And suddenly, she slipped to the floor, and laid her head against Janet's knees, hiding her face. Janet bent over her, instinctively caressing the brown hair. She was only three or four years older than Rachel, but she looked much older, and the close linen cap she wore on butter-making afternoons, and had not yet removed, gave her a gently austere look, like that of a religious. "Tell me--I'll do my best." "In the first place," said Rachel, in a low voice, "who do you think was the ghost?" "What do you mean?" "The ghost--was Roger Delane!" Janet uttered an exclamation of surprise and horror--while fact after fact rushed together in her mind, fitting into one explanatory whole. Why had she never thought of that possibility, among all the others? "Oh, Rachel, have you ever seen him?"