“What? Me?” She laughed again, but with less heartiness. Brack was so strange, so daft. “Nay, I’d have all the breath out of me afore we’d reached the first gate! Stop here, lad, and make yourself easy.” Francey stepped forward suddenly. Mad or no, Brack had made her afraid. “I’ll go!” she said. “We’d be happier with them here at Ladyford. Anyhow, we can see if they’re all right and not anxious.” Brack gave her no time to retract, but thrust her roughly into a wrap close at hand, paying no whit of attention to motherly protests, and had her out in the yard before she had drawn the streaming ends of her scarf around her head. Scrambling over her to his seat, he bade her crouch on the floor for protection, for the rain made the screen worse than useless, and, moreover, he was afraid for it against the gale. In the whirling dark he dared not reverse out, so set the car head on to the gateway, trusting to luck to turn her in the open road. With the wind behind her, she took the slight gradient free like a greyhound, and he threw in the clutch at the bottom just in time to save her mounting the sea-wall. Then, with infinite trouble and labour on the narrow track, he wrenched her head round into the storm, the gale fighting him all the time. Brack had done many a pretty piece of driving for the impressing of his friends, but to-night both vanity and pose were as far from him as the black gulf of heaven above. Straining and gasping, he pulled round on his road with a sob of relief, not even conscious of the crouching girl at his feet. Then began the struggle out to the Pride, the engine biting its way yard by yard through the opposing force, often almost stopping, as an extra weight of air drove upon it, but always gallantly picking up again. Brack had learned to see through slashing rain, like most drivers, but this torrent of wind and water made as though it would hurl him off the face of the earth. With numb hands he kept the car on the road by some sense that seemed outside himself altogether. Francey, with her head buried on her knees, feeling the striving engine growing hot and hotter beneath her, and Brack’s feet moving beside her, wondered what tremendous motive could have brought them both to this shared nightmare. She remembered the former occasion when he had asked her to drive with him, and she had refused, little dreaming of this that lay before. In the comparative tranquillity of Ladyford it had seemed easy to talk of going over to the Pride. On a reasonable day it was no more than fifteen minutes’ walk. To-night, behind a powerful engine, it seemed as far away as Whitehaven.