"Why shouldn't he be keeping straight?" she asked. No doubt Laura had thought him just a ne'er do weel. But he was nothing of the sort--he was a bit wild and unruly, as young men are--"same as t' colts afoor yo break 'em." But Laura would have done much better for herself if she had stayed quietly with him that night at Braeside, and let him take her over the sands, as he wished to, instead of running away from him in that foolish way. Polly spoke with significance--nay, with heat. Laura was first startled, then abashed. "Do you think I made a ridiculous fuss?" she said humbly. "Perhaps I did. But if--if--" she spoke slowly, drawing patterns on the wood of the stile with her finger, "if I hadn't seen him drunk once--I suppose I shouldn't have been afraid." "Well, you'd no call to be afraid!" cried Polly. "Hubert vowed to me, as he hadna had a drop of onything. And after all, he's a relation--an if you'd walked wi him, you'd not ha had telegrams sent aboot you to make aw th' coontry taak!" "Telegrams!" Laura stared. "Oh, I know--Mr. Helbeck telegraphed to the station-master--but it must have come after I'd left the station." "Aye--an t' station-master sent word back to Mr. Helbeck! Perhaps you doan't knaw onything aboot that!" exclaimed Polly triumphantly. Laura turned rather pale. "A telegram to Mr. Helbeck?" Polly, surprised at so much ignorance, could not forego the sensation that it offered her. She bit her lip, but the lip would speak. So the story of the midnight telegram--as it had been told by that godly man Mr. Cawston of Braeside to that other godly man Mr. Bayley, perpetual curate of Browhead, and as by now it had gone all about the country-side--came piecemeal out. "Oh! an at that Papist shop i' th' High Street--you remember that sickly-lukin fellow at the dance--they do say at they do taak shameful!" exclaimed Polly indignantly. "What do they say?" said Laura in a low voice. Polly hesitated. Then out of sheer nervousness she blundered into the harshest possible answer. "Well, they said that Mr. Helbeck could do no different, that he did it to save his sister from knowing----" "Knowing what?" said Laura. Polly declared that she wasn't just certain. "A set o' slanderin backbitin tabbies as soom o' them Catholics is!" But she believed they said that Mr. Helbeck had asked Miss Fountain to marry him out of kindness, to shut people's mouths, and keep it from his sister---- "Keep what?" said Laura. Her eyes shone in her quivering proud face. "Why, I suppose--at you'd been carryin on wi Hubert, and walkin aboot wi him aw neet," said Polly reluctantly. And she again insisted how much wiser it would have been if Laura had just gone quietly over the sands to Marsland. There, no doubt, she might have got a car straight away, and there might have been no talk whatever.