The lights of Parracombe, precipitous and unexpected, were like flecks in the sky, wiped out by a sudden driving storm of sleet. A little while later they cantered up the avenue to Woolhanger and Jane slipped from her horse with a little sigh of relief. "You'd better stay and have some tea, Mr. Segerson," she invited. "John will take your horse and give him a rubdown." She changed her habit and, forgetting her guest, indulged in the luxury of a hot bath. She descended some time later to find him sitting in front of the tea tray in the hall. A more than usually gracious smile soon drove the frown from his forehead. "I really am frightfully sorry," she apologised, as she handed him his tea. "I had no idea I was so wet. You'll have rather a bad ride home." "Oh, I'm used to it," he answered. "I'm afraid they'll lose a good many sheep on the higher farms, though, if the storm turns out as bad as it threatens. Hear that!" A tornado of wind seemed to shake the ground beneath their feet. Jane shivered. "I suppose," she reflected, "that man Crockford thought I was very cruel to-day." "I will tell you Crockford's point of view," Segerson replied. "He doesn't exactly understand what your aims are, and wherever he goes he hears nothing but praise of the way you have treated your tenants and the way you have tried to turn them into small landowners. He isn't intelligent enough to realise that there is a principle behind all this. He has simply come to feel that he has a lenient landlord and that he has only to sit still and the plums will drop into his mouth, too. Crockford is one of the weak spots in your system, Lady Jane. There is no place for him or his kind in a self-supporting world." She sighed. "Then I am afraid he must go down," she said. "He simply stands in the way of better men." "One reads a good deal of Mr. Tallente, nowadays," Segerson remarked, changing the conversation a little abruptly. Jane leaned over and stroked the head of a dog which had come to lie at her feet. "He seems to be making a good deal of stir," she observed. The young man frowned. "You know I am not unsympathetic with your views, Lady Jane," he said, a little awkwardly, "but I don't mind admitting that if I had a big stake in the country I should be afraid of Tallente. No one seems to be able to pin him down to a definite programme and yet day by day his influence grows. The Labour Party is disintegrated. The best of all its factions are joining the Democrats. He is practically leader of the Opposition Party to-day and I don't see how they are going to stop his being Prime Minister whenever he chooses." "Don't you think he'll make a good Prime Minister?" Jane asked. "No, I don't," was the curt answer. "He is too dark a horse for my fancy."