“Stir up thy strength, O Lord, and come and help us; for thou givest not always the battle to the strong, but canst save by many or by few.... Hear us thy poor servants begging mercy, and imploring thy help.” And Lanty, with his face turned to the sea, answered “Amen!” Denny passed him as he rode on, saluting him with a lifted whip. His pleasant, uncaring face was troubled and wondering. He met the agent’s eyes with a question in his own. Lancaster broke into a trot in the fair evening, and, behind him, over the sea, there came up a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. CHAPTER XXII COMING Robert Whinnerah looked in at the door of the little bedroom, and saw Lup standing by the window, knitting his dark brows over a sheet of flimsy. The yellow envelope lay on his bed. “What’s amiss, lad?” He had seen him take the telegram in, and wondered; and presently he had followed him up. He was a tall, gaunt, white-bearded man, with a look of Wolf about the eyes. “Nay, I can’t make top nor bottom on it!” Lup puzzled. “If there’s owt amiss, it’s the sort as doesn’t bide shouting down a wire. It just says ‘Come at once!’ with never a why nor wherefore to its tail. ‘Come at once!’ Ay, yon’s all there is to it.” “From Wolf? From your dad?” “Not it! It’s from Bracken Holliday. You’ll mind the Hollidays o’ Pippin Hall, I reckon? Well, old Willie’s Brack’s uncle. He took him in an orphan and tried to put him in the way o’ things, but Brack was all for something fresh, and made off to Canada afore he was sixteen. He raised money there an’ all--he’s smart in his way, is Brack--and then come home to farm at Thweng. He’s in fine fettle, nowadays, and as throng as a dog wi’ two tails, aping quality and driving his own motor-car, but he’s no friend o’ mine. That’s why I’m capt to reckon up the meaning o’ this here.” “Happen it’s a joke.” With Lup’s arrival, Robert had fallen speedily to the use of the old words. “Nay, I thought of that, but I don’t hold by it. Brack thinks overmuch of himself for such-like daft lakin’. Besides--I’d a notion he’d his own reasons for wishing me out o’ the road.” “Best wire your folk, asking if there’s owt wrong.” Lup shook his head, folding the paper back into its cover. “I reckon nowt o’ wire-talk an’ trumpet-talk an’ such-like! Seein’s believin’, when all’s said an’ done. I’ll gang myself. There’s a train somewheres about midnight, isn’t there?” Robert stared. “You’re forgetting you sail to-morrow, lad, at noon!” Lup reached for his overcoat. “Happen--if I’m not sailing across t’ Wythe instead!” “Ay, but your passage booked--your gear aboard!” “Let ’em bide!” said Lup tranquilly, and went out to the station. * * * * * He was in Witham before seven o’clock. It was a dreary morning, and offered to be a wild day. Passing Hest Bank, he could both hear and feel a big wind whistling in from the sea, and it was raining heavily.