The moon drove through the cloud-wrack as she stood there, lighting each shadowed hollow of her face. There was tenderness in her eyes, but tears were drawn like a veil across them; there was softness in the mouth, but pride and resolve hid all save the sterner lines. She turned her head quickly toward the belfry as the clang of the death-bell struck through the storm-din of the larger strife; and then she hid her face in her two strong hands, and sobbed as wildly as ever the wind could do. And after that she went forward, through the gate, up the narrow path, past the great stone, with the iron rings on either side, which hid the burial vault of the Waynes. "Not there, father! They will never leave you out there for ever," she whispered—"you who were so strong yesterday, so full of the warmth of life. God, God, if You were made after our fashion, as men say, You would raise him from the dead. How the blood dripped, dripped from the little hole in his side. Oh, God, be merciful! Say that the wind has blown my wits away—say that all this is——" She checked herself. Her passion died out, leaving her bitterly calm as the graves she lingered by. "Nay, there is no mercy, nor shall be," said she. "No mercy—no mercy," yelled the wind, as it howled across the moor and in through the kirkyard hedge. The girl was comforted in some sort, it seemed, by the tempest’s devilry. She turned from the vault and moved with a firm step to the foot of the church-tower; one hand had stolen to her girdle, and as the bell’s note shuddered down the wind-beats once again, her fingers tightened round the knife-hilt. "A drear neet for th’ owd Maister," the Sexton’s wife was crooning to herself, as she knitted her stocking in the belfry tower above. "’Tis a cold journey an’ a long he’s bound for, an’ he’ll feel th’ lack o’ flesh-warmth; ay, poor body! I could hev wished his soul fairer weather." Up the crooked stair, worn by a half-score generations, passed Nell Wayne, with her brave carriage and her pitiless face. The Sexton’s wife dropped a stitch of her knitting as she heard the door open; and her heart went pit-a-pat, for it was a fit night for ghosts. "Oh, ’tis ye, Mistress, is’t?" she grumbled, soon as she saw it was no ghost at all, but just Nell Wayne of Marsh. The girl looked at her awhile in silence, as if the crabbed figure, working busily with hand and foot by the light of a rush candle, were dear to her at such a time. "Well, then, what hes brought ye through th’ storm?" said the little woman. "I warrant ’tis easier to lig between sheets nor to cross th’ moor to-neet." "There’s no ease, Nanny, save in fighting the storm," cried the girl. "Could I rest quiet at Marsh House, think’st thou, knowing what lies there?" "Nay, for th’ wind rapped hard at th’ windows an’ called ye out; ye war iver th’ storm’s bairn," said Nanny, chuckling grimly.