‘Don’t twist! You’re hurting! I can run as well as you!’ came back, with an energy Bindy had never shown before in his life. He was breathless, panting, charged with excitement still. ‘It touched me as he passed--fire that lights but doesn’t burn, and wind that blows the heart to flame--let me go, will you? Let go my hand.’ He dashed free and away. The torrential rain came down in sheets now from a windless sky, for the _joran_ was already miles beyond them, tearing across the angry lake. They reached the carpenter’s house, where their lodging was, soaked to the skin. They dried themselves, and ate the light supper of soup and omelette prepared for them--ate it in their dressing-gowns. Lord Ernie went to bed with a hot-water bottle of rough stone. He declared with decision that he felt no chill. His excitement had somewhat passed. ‘But, I say, Mr. Hendricks,’ he remarked, as he settled down with his novel and a cigarette, calmed and normal again, ‘this _is_ a place and a half, isn’t it? It stirs me all up. I suppose it’s the storm. What do _you_ think?’ ‘Electrical state of the air, yes,’ replied the tutor briefly. Soon afterwards he closed the shutters on the weather side, said good-night, and went into his own room to unpack. The singular phrase Bindy had used kept singing through his head: ‘Fire that lights but doesn’t burn, and wind that blows the heart to flame’--the first time he had said ‘blows the world along.’ Where on earth had the boy got hold of such queer words? He still saw the figure of that wild mountain fellow who had passed between them with the dust and wind and rain. There was confusion in the picture, or rather in his memory of it, perhaps. But it seemed to him, looking back now, that the man in passing had paused a second--the briefest second merely--and had spoken, or, at any rate, had stared closely a moment into Bindy’s face, and that some communication had been between them in that moment of elemental violence. III