But Janet was back already with a handful of the warm red mould, and she bade him get down from saddle that she might the better fasten on the bandage. "Now tell me. How didst come through it, Ned?" she asked, tying a second knot in the kerchief. "That is what I cannot tell thee. They met me, four of them, where the road is narrow up by Dead Lad’s Rigg." "Ay, four of them. God give me shame," murmured Janet. "I heard the Lean Man bid them stand aside and leave us to it, and after that I knew no more till he and I were lunging each at the other. He knocked my sword up at the last, and lifted his own blade to strike——" "Yes, yes, go on. What then, Ned?" "Nay, I told thee I could give no right answer. Just as I had given all up—with a thought, it may be, of one who had been forbidden—the Lean Man’s arm dropped to his side, and he sprang back in the saddle, all but unseating himself." "But, Ned, I cannot credit it. Didst thou make no movement to drive him back?" "None, for ’twas all done in a flash, and he might have split my skull in two if he had brought down that great blade of his." "Was there naught, then, to occasion it?" "Naught that I could see, yet he backed as if the fiend were at his throat. His own folk were no less puzzled than I, but his terror ran out to them and held them; and when I made at him afresh not one rode forward." "Didst—didst not kill him?" she said. Any but the Lean Man he might slay, but her grandfather—nay, she could not brook that when faced so suddenly with the chance of it. "I did not," answered Wayne grimly—"for the reason that he fled." Again she stared at him. "_Fled_? Grandfather fled, say’st thou?" "Did I not say that there was Ratcliffe pride in thee? Ay, plain in thy voice, and in thy little faith that the Lean Man could flee. Yet so it is, Janet; and I made after him almost to the gates of Wildwater; and if his had not been the better horse——" "Then whence came this ugly gash of thine? ’Tis all a puzzle, Ned, and my late fear for thee has dulled my wits, I think." "Why, his folk came after me in half-hearted fashion, and I had to ride through the three of them when I turned back for Wildwater. I took this cut in passing, and he who gave it me will go lame for the rest of a short life; and then they, too, made off, daunted by the old man’s panic, and I was left to wonder what goblin had come between Nicholas Ratcliffe’s blade and me." "He has been strange of late—ever since the night when he came down to burn thee out of Marsh. Some illness has taken him; it was the fire that did it, may be, when he fell face foremost into it." They stood awhile, neither breaking the strained silence. Then Janet touched the bandage lightly, and smoothed it a little over the close-cropped hair, and, "Ned," she whispered, "thou said’st something just now. _With a thought of one who had been forbidden_. Who was it, Ned?"