"Not far," said Janet, and then, not knowing how else to find her a place of shelter, she took the little woman by the hand and led her down the moor until they reached the rough brack, cut from the solid peat and flanked on either hand by clumps of bilberry, which led to Marshcotes; and further toward Marsh House she would have gone with her, had not a glance at the sun told her that she could scarce get back to Wildwater before the dinner-hour. "The road lies straight to Marshcotes," she said, stopping and pointing down the highway. "Will you not come all the way with me?" pleaded Mistress Wayne, nestling closer to the girl’s side. "I cannot, Mistress. Grandfather may have lacked me as ’tis, and I dare not overstay the dinner-hour, lest he should guess what errand has brought me out of doors." "No," said the other, simply, "he would not like thee to go gathering red-eyed daisies from the stone— Why, now, I know my way," she broke off, a light of recognition stealing into her empty face. "Yonder is Withens on the hill, and over there is Marshcotes; and there’s a field-path, is there not, that takes me out of the high-road down to Marsh—an odd little path, all full of rounded pebbles, that creeps down the hill so craftily because it fears the steepness? Oh, yes, I know the way to Marsh." "Fare ye well," said Janet, softly, with the tears close behind her voice. "Go home to Marsh, Mistress, and God give you friends there." She watched the little figure move down the road, stopping here and there to pluck a spray of rusted heather or a half-opened wild flower from the banks on either hand, until the shoulder of the peat-rise hid her. Fierce in hatred or in love was Janet, like all her folk, and her pity for Mistress Wayne had grown already to a sort of hard defiance of those who could wrong so frail a creature. "’Tis such as Red Ratcliffe who think it sport to mock the weaklings," she said, turning sharp about for Wildwater. "He would be very brave, I doubt, were he to meet yond little body on the moor—had she no men folk with her."