He was right enough in that last prediction. For although I had fastened the door—in strict keeping with the moral of the proverb—and no rain had pelted the ground outside it, yet a greater effacer than rain had been there. For the spot being on a sharp slope, and below the crown of the road, or the lane I should say, a strong rush of water had taken track there, and washed away all the dust, and then the heavier substance, leaving rough pebbles with sharp edges sticking up, as clean and unconscious as before they saw the world. “Nothing to be made of that,” said Biggs; “nor of any footmarks anywhere else, after all the rain as have fallen. Only one thing to do now is to inquire of the neighbours, and folk as were about last night.” CHAPTER XXXIX. ON TWO CHAIRS. FOR as much as three weeks I had been full of pride, in taking my Kitty about everywhere—even by the seaside, where I knew very little, but luckily she knew less, in spite of her scientific origin—and asking her to look about and see things with her own eyes; and if she could not make them out, to call me in to help her. This had been rash on my part; for a man may be gaping about, for his lifetime, and die after all with his mouth wide open; and not a word come from it, to help the people left behind, but only to unsettle them, and put them in a flutter; as gnats skip into another dance, at every new breath across them. But Kitty had really put some questions far outside my knowledge (as a child may, who hangs on his grandfather’s thumb), and I had promised to look up those points and deliver an opinion, when I had one. All this came into my mind, like a chill, when I had to trace her dear steps, away from me, away from me. Let seventy times seven wise men say that no man with a grain of wisdom could have a spark of faith in women, because they never know their own mind—little as there is of it to know—I still abode in my own faith, and let them quote old saws against the sturdy holdfast of true love. I felt as sure of my Kitty’s heart, as I did of my own, and more so; for she never would have borne to hear a hundredth part of the things against me, which I had to listen to against her. And the cowards, who vent their own craven souls in slander of those who cannot face them, had a fine time of it now, and rejoiced in the misery they were too small to feel. Such things might sour a weakling, who depends upon what other people think; but I found enough of manhood coming up in me, as time went on, to make me stick to my own trust, and let outer opinions touch my home, no more than the shower that runs down the glass.