"Ah, but I need! I was dying, Ned—dying for lack of warmth. And Dick Ratcliffe promised to take me into shelter; and I clutched at the chance greedily, as a prisoner would if one came and offered him liberty. But the wrong that Wayne fancied of me, when he found us in the orchard, I had never thought to do—never, dear. I was a child, and loved Ratcliffe because he showed me a way out of trouble; and I meant to go away with him because—how shall I tell thee, so as to make thee credit it? I had not a thought of—Ned, I was not wicked, only tired—tired, till I had no eyes to see the straight road, nor heart to follow it. I was hungering for warmth; the ghosts were so busy all about Marsh House, and I wanted the happy valleys, out of reach of the curlew-cries and the shuddering midnight winds." Wayne put an arm about her. "It was worth telling, bairn," he said quietly, "and father would lie quieter if he knew that his honour had not gone so far astray." "Thou’lt still keep a friend to me?" she whispered. The gloom settled more heavily upon his face. "Thou talk’st as if I were thy judge," he said. "’Twas only in seeming thou didst the worst wrong to father—but what of me? Did I look so carefully to his honour? Or was it his own eldest-born who darkened his last days, who made his name a by-word up and down the country-side, who drank while a kinsman fought the vengeance-fight for him? Not if I work to my life’s end to wipe off the stain, will it come clean." "’Tis cleansed already, Ned, twice over cleansed—and there’s one waiting who will give thee thanks for it. I met her not long since in the kirkyard, and I never saw love so plain on a maid’s face." Her voice was eager, and the words came fast, as if she had given long thought to the matter. "Mistress Ratcliffe, thou mean’st?" said Wayne, after a silence. "What ails thee, bairn, to be so hot for this unlikely wedding?" "Because she is straight and strong, and full of care for thee; because, when an ill chance led me once to Wildwater, it was she who took pity on me and showed me a safe road to Marsh. Ned, she is the one wife in the world for thee; why wilt thou cling to the old troubles?" He shook his head. "The troubles are new that stand ’twixt Janet and myself—and any day may bring forth more of them." "Thy folk will be her folk, if thou’lt take her," she broke in eagerly. "She lives among rough men—there’s danger every hour for her." Mistress Wayne had struck the right note at last. Half willing as he was to be convinced, and imbued with the sense that the fairy-kist could give no wrong advice, he would yet have held obstinately to his old path. But he took fire at the suggestion that there was danger to the girl at Wildwater. Now and then a passing fear of it had crossed his own self-poised outlook on the situation; but a hint of it from another roused all his smouldering jealousy and passion. "Danger? Of what?" he cried.