About the same hour in London, a message was flashed North to greet our traveller with a great disappointment. He had to change at Carlisle; and as he was boarding the Newcastle train there, his heart full of Kitty, hope struggling once more against resignation, an official carrying an orange envelope came along inquiring for “a Mr. Colin Hayward.” And presently Colin was reading Risk’s message— “Urgent. Return straight to London.” There was just time to rush back to the express train he had so recently left. Afterwards there was more than enough time for wonder and worry. CHAPTER XX ON the afternoon of the same day, which happened to be the weekly half-holiday, Rachel Corrie returned from a longish walk undertaken, as she had announced to her brother at dinner, in the hope of relieving a severe headache. In these days it was for her a rare occurrence to leave the house at all, and a common one to have a headache, but Corrie had been too self-engrossed to be moved by surprise or sympathy. Entering the cottage, Rachel certainly did not look much the better of the outing; she seemed, in fact, to be suffering from a faintness, for at first she leaned awhile against the closed door, and she crept slowly and unsteadily up the passage, keeping her hand on the wall for support. Presently she was peering into the darkened shop; listening, also. Ere long her brother’s voice came indistinctly from the post office beyond; she gathered that he was checking figures with the assistant. Rachel appeared to nerve herself, then stepped stealthily into the shop. On a nail in the wall, just behind the door, she hung a ponderous key—the spare key of the mill, which had been idle that day for the first time in several weeks. For fully a minute she stood motionless save for her breathing, her hand pressed hard to her heart; then, with a heavy sigh, she stole out and laboriously ascended to her room. She was wholly spent as she fell upon her bed, yet at the end of an hour she was down in the kitchen preparing the evening meal, to which her brother would come when he had finished with the inward evening mail. Of late John Corrie’s appetite had been indifferent; to-night it seemed to have failed him altogether. He sat there speechless, now and then taking a sup of tea, and never once allowing his gaze to fall on his sister—not that she, poor soul, could have met it for an instant. Nevertheless, at last she forced herself to speak. “Can ye no’ eat, John?” He shook his head impatiently. “Let me be. I’m no’ hungry.” With her eyes on the cloth she said in a strange gentleness of tone: “John, dinna trouble over much. Maybe everything ’ll come right yet. Dinna be vexed wi’ me, but I believe—John, I believe that if ye took pen now and wrote to Kitty, telling her the truth—” She stopped short, so dreadful was his expression. “Let that be,” he growled, “or ye’ll drive me stark mad. Peace!—no’ another word!” He got up and strode from the room.