"He dragged himself down this very path," she said. "They tracked him by the blood stains; his wounds dripped all along it. And then he fell, just under my cart-shed. It was a horrible, bitter night. Of course the silly people here say they hear groans and dragging steps: That's all nonsense, but I sometimes wish it hadn't happened at my farm." He couldn't help laughing gently at her foolishness. "Why, it's a great distinction to have a ghost!" She disagreed--decidedly. "Any one can have my ghost that wants. I'm awfully easily scared." "Are you?" There was a deep note in his voice. "No, I don't believe that. I'm sure you're a plucky woman. I know you are!" She laughed out. "How do you know?" "Why, no one but a plucky woman could have taken this farm and be working it as you're doing." "That's not pluck," she said, half scornfully. "But if it is--well, I've got plenty of pluck of that kind. But I am often scared, downright scared, about nothing. It's just fear, that's what it is." "Fear of what?" "I don't know." She spoke in a sombre, shrinking tone, which struck him uncomfortably. But when he tried further to discover what she meant, she would say nothing more. He noticed, indeed, that she would often seem to turn the talk upon herself, only to cut it short again immediately. She offered him openings, and then he could make nothing of them; so that when they reached the outskirts of the farm on their return, he had given her all the main outlines of his own history, and she had said almost nothing of hers. But all the same the walk had drawn them much nearer. He stopped her at the little gate to say,-- "I'm going to ask you again--I want you to write to me when I'm in France." And this time she said almost eagerly,-- "Yes, I'll write; indeed I'll write! But you'll come over again before you go?" "Rather," he said joyously; "rather! Why, there's a month. You'll be tired of me before you've done." A few minutes later she was standing in her own little room, listening to the retreating rush of his motor-cycle down the road. There was a great tumult in her mind. "Am I falling in love with him? Am I--am I?" But in the dark, when she had put out her light, the cry that shaped itself in her mind was identical with that sudden misgiving of the afternoon, when on Ellesborough's arrival she had first heard his voice downstairs talking to Janet. "_I wish he knew_!" But this time it was no mere passing qualm. It had grown into something intense and haunting. * * * * * On this same September afternoon, a dark-eyed, shabby woman, with a little girl, alighted at Millsborough Station. They were met by a man who had been lounging about the station for some time and whose appearance had attracted some attention. "See him at a distance, and you might take him for a lord; but get him close, my word!--" said the station-master to the booking-clerk, with a shrug, implying many things.