She continued, in an eager, hurried whisper, without desisting for a moment from her task: "Close by here, under the birch-tree, is a sheep-track that will lead you safe to the bottom of the coombe. Keep in the brushwood by the water-side, and follow the stream. A mile lower down you will come to Red Rube's hut. They will never think of looking for you there. Tell him Thyra Lovel sent you, and he will hide you for my sake. Farewell, Master Garnet. I--I wish you good luck, and--do not--do not quite forget Waif!" Ere she had done speaking, his heavy riding-boots were drawn on her own shapely limbs. Then she turned away to plunge through the snow without another word. He stretched his arms towards her. For one brief moment she stood looking at him, less like a woman of real flesh and blood, than some visionary phantom of the night. To his dying day, John Garnet never forgot that figure of the gipsy-girl, her pale face, her raven hair, the folds of her scarlet hood seen through the slanting downfall of the storm. Those solemn eyes, with their yearning gaze, seemed still bent on him, long after the slender shape had vanished in that grey and thickening gloom; vanished for ever, to return no more but in his dreams. Shouts at no great distance warned him that he must attend to his own safety, and, slipping cautiously into the coombe, he obeyed Waif's directions to the letter, keeping studiously under cover in the brushwood, and making his way along the bed of the stream, as nimbly as lacerated feet, protected only by hose, would allow. Ere he reached Red Rube's hut, where he found the harbourer at home and willing to give him shelter, he had plenty of time to reflect on his future plans, and to appreciate the devotion and self-sacrifice of the girl whose heart he had won so lightly and cared so little to retain. Pangs he felt, no doubt, of pity, regret, even remorse, but through them all, he could not but admit, that one glance from Nelly Carew's blue eyes would be enough to make him forget his own thoughtless frivolity, and the gipsy's unreasoning, incontrollable affection that was now risking dear life for his sake. He could not but acknowledge the dangers she must incur toiling through the snow in his heavy riding-boots, that she might draw his pursuers from the path he actually followed. She might perish of cold and exhaustion on the open moor. She might be buried in some snow-drift from which she had not strength to extricate herself. Worse than all, when overtaken and caught, what fatal penalty might not be exacted by the vengeance of that half-savage husband whom she had deceived for the sake of her Gentile love. If Waif herself entertained any such misgivings, they were swallowed up in the single consideration of out-witting his pursuers, to save John Garnet from death.