Clement was unwilling to go, unwilling to have no farther part in the matter. But he could not refuse. Things were as they were; in spite of all that he had done and suffered, he had no place there, no standing in the house, no right beside his mistress or call to think for her. He was a stranger, an outsider, and when he had fetched the doctor, there would, as Arthur had said, be nothing more that he could do. Nothing more, though as he rode over the bridge and trotted through the village his heart was bursting with pity for her whom he could not comfort, could not see; from whose side in her troubles and her self-arraignment—for he knew that she would reproach herself—he must be banished. It was hard. CHAPTER XV The Squire was late. A hundred years ago night fell more seriously. It closed in on a countryside less peopled, on houses and hamlets more distant, and divided by greater risks of flood and field. The dark hours were longer and haunted by graver apprehensions. Every journey had to be made on horses or behind them, roads were rough and miry, fords were plenty, bridges scarce. Sturdy rogues abounded, and to double every peril it was still the habit of most men to drink deep. Few returned sober from market, fewer from fair or merry-making. For many, therefore, the coming of night meant the coming of fear. Children, watching the great moths fluttering against the low ceiling, or round the rush-light that cast such gloomy shadows, thought that their elders would never come upstairs to bed. Lone women, quaking in remote dwellings, remembered the gibbet where the treacherous inn-keeper still moulded, and fancied every creak the coming of a man in a crape mask. Thousands suffered nightly because the goodman lingered abroad, or the son was absent, and in many a window the light was set at dusk to guide the master by the pool. On market evenings women stole trembling down the lane that the sound of wheels might the sooner dispel their fears. At Garth it was youth not age that first caught the alarm. For Josina’s conscience troubled her, and before even Miss Peacock, most fidgety of old maids, had seen cause to fear, the girl was standing in the darkness before the door, listening and uneasy. The Squire was seldom late; it could not be that Clement had met him and there had been a—but no, Clement was not the man to raise his hand against his elder—the thought was dismissed as soon as formed. Yet why did not the Squire come? Lights began to shine through the casements, she saw the candles brought into the dining-room, the darkness thickened about her, only the trunks of the nearer beeches gave back a gleam. And she felt that if anything had happened to him she could never forgive herself. Shivering, less with cold than with apprehension, she peered down the drive. He had been later than this before, but then her conscience had been quiet, she had not deceived him, she had had nothing with which to reproach herself on his account.