Lancaster choked his feelings with an effort. “Please do not bother about me,” he said curtly, raising his cap. “You have every right to the lane. And I don’t think it was funny at all. Good-night.” She responded reluctantly, feeling that she had somehow failed to put things right. She wanted to placate this cross, solitary-minded person who had already turned his thin, serious face back to the break in the hedge. Perhaps he was not really cross. He might be suffering from nerves. They ought not to have worried him, poor thing! A young moon came up over the hill. For a moment they looked together through the green arch. “It must be fearfully quiet, down there!” she said, nodding towards the buildings hugging the land close as if they loved it and were loved in return. “I’m not sure I shall like living in the country. Everything seems to be listening for something that never gets itself said. And why don’t they put the poor animals under cover? I should hate to spend the night out of doors, myself!” He had been watching the moon and his wraith of a Mountain, and at her words he winced again. She was shattering his magic with both hands. She had no thought for the summer dew or the nestled lambs, the grey robe of the night or the gentle miracle of dawn. It meant nothing to her, this creeping mystery of eve. “Thought I heard a policeman’s whistle a minute ago,” he observed casually. “I met the constable following up tramps when I came out. Perhaps your folks have run into him.” With a sense of relief he found himself alone again at last, but the charm had temporarily vanished, the fairy-things remained away. He wished she had not looked through his Green Gate with her alien eyes; he was afraid of seeing things as she saw them. She had thought it nicer for the stock to be indoors, just as she doubtless thought it better for him to be under his own roof instead of mooning about a ridiculous lane. He loathed the thought of his own house at that moment. He disliked the girl who had broken the happy spell. He leaned over the gate in the gloaming, watching the quietened sheep, and trying to call the magic back. “If in field or tree There might only be Such a warm, soft sleeping-place Found for me!” CHAPTER III TROUBLE He rode over to Ladyford the following afternoon. Helwise came agitating on to the doorstep, just as his foot was in the stirrup, to tell him that his lordship had returned unexpectedly.