At length, on a certain afternoon, Mrs. Gillingwater ordered Joan to go out walking. Joan did not wish to go out, for the weather threatened rain, also for her own reasons she preferred to remain where she was. But her aunt was peremptory, and Joan started, setting her face towards Ramborough Abbey. Very soon it came on to rain and she had no umbrella, but this accident did not deter her. She had been sent out to walk, and walk she would. To tell the truth, she was thinking little of the weather, for her mind was filled with resentment against her aunt. It was unbearable that she should be interfered with and ordered about like a child. There were a hundred things that she wished to do in the house. Who would give Captain Graves his tea? And she was sure that he would never remember about the medicine unless she was there to remind him. As Joan proceeded on her walk along the edge of the cliff, she noticed the figure of a man, standing about a quarter of a mile to her right on the crest or hog’s back of land, beyond which lay the chain of melancholy meres, and wondered vaguely what he could be doing there in such weather. At length it occurred to her that it was time to return, for now she was near to Ramborough Abbey. She was weary of the sight of the sea, that moaned sullenly beneath her, half hidden by the curtain of the rain; so she struck across the ridge of land, heedless of the wet saline grasses that swept against her skirt, purposing to walk home by the little sheep-track which follows the edge of the meres in the valley. As she was crossing the highest point of the ridge she saw the man’s figure again. Suddenly it disappeared, and the thought struck her that he might have been following her, keeping parallel to her path. For a moment Joan hesitated, for the country just here was very lonely, especially in such weather; but the next she dismissed her fears, being courageous by nature, and passed on towards the first mere. Doubtless this person was a shepherd looking for a lost sheep, or perhaps a gamekeeper. The aspect of the lakes was so dreary, and the path so sopping wet, that soon Joan began to wish that she had remained upon the cliff. However, she trudged on bravely, the rain beating in her face till her thin dress was soaked and clung to her shape in a manner that was picturesque but uncomfortable. At the head of the second mere the sheep-walk ran past some clumps of high reeds; and as she approached them Joan, whose eye for natural objects was quick, observed that something had disturbed the wild fowl which haunted the place, for a heron and a mallard rose and circled high in the air, and a brace of curlew zigzagged away against the wind, uttering plaintive cries that reached her for long after they vanished into the mist. Now she had come to the first clump of reeds, when she heard a stir behind them, and a man stepped forward and stood in the middle of the path within three paces of her.