When Maisie went out, Kate heard the outer door shut with a crash as the wind rushed in. The flames swirled up the wide chimney in the sitting-room, whereupon she rose and drew the curtain across the inner door. Then she went to the wood-box and piled fresh fagots about the great back-log, which had grown red and smouldering. For a long time after she had finished she knelt looking at the cheerful blaze. She sighed deeply, as if her thoughts had not been of the same complexion. Then she rose and went to the window which looked out upon the canal. It was her favorite musing-place. She leaned her brow against the half-drawn dimity curtain, and watched the rain thresh the waters till they gleamed gray-white in the sparkle of the lights along the canal bank. A vague unrest and uncertainty filled her soul. "Wat, Wat!" she whispered, half to herself. "What would I not give if I might speak to you to-night--only tell you that I would never be hasty or angry with you again!" And she set her hand upon her side as though she had been suddenly stricken by a pain of some grievous sort. Yet not a pang of sharp agony, but only a dull, empty ache, lonely and hungry, was abiding there. "How he must hate me!" she said. "It was my fault that he went away in anger. He would never have gone to that place had we not first been cruel to him here." And in his cell, listening dully, to the tramp of the sparse passers-by coming up to his window through the tumultuous blowing of all the horns of the tempest, Wat was saying to himself the same thing: "How she must hate me--thus to walk with him and let him point a scornful hand at my prison window." But in the street of Zaandpoort, the lonely girl's uneasiness was fast deepening into terror. Suddenly Kate lifted her head. There was surely a slight noise at the outer door. She had a vague feeling that a foot was coming up the stair. She listened intently, but heard nothing save the creaking of doors within and the hurl of the tempest without. A thought came sharply to her, and her heart leaped palpably in her breast. Could it possibly be that Wat, released from prison, had come directly back to her? Her lips parted, and a very lovely light came into her eyes, as of late was used to do when one spoke well of Wat Gordon. She stood gazing fixedly at the door, but the sound was not repeated. Then she looked at the place where he had stood on the threshold that first night when he came bursting in upon them--the time when he saw her lie with her head low in Maisie's lap. "Dear Wat!" she said softly, over and over to herself--"dear, dear Wat!"