wandering about earlier, and was anxious in case I was really lost, so hunted me up. He wanted to bring me home, but I knew he’d to get down to the ‘Duke’ by eight o’clock, so I wouldn’t let him. He’d only just gone when you caught me up. They’ll be out of their minds about me at Watters, and I shall probably die there if not in the ginnel; but even if I don’t, I mean to file that Judgment Bill against Stubbs!” It was certainly quieter in the Lane, so that Lanty was able to catch most of her troubled story, and though he sympathised warmly, and reviled Stubbs heartily, he could not help laughing, too, and when he laughed she felt hurt, and wetter than ever. “I’m frightened of your horrid country!” she said miserably. “I’m sure there was something queer about it to-night, anyhow. I felt as if it were playing cat and mouse with me, and watching me run round and round and yet never out of reach. _Don’t_ laugh! It laughed at me, too--I could hear it--and the wind set all the bushes catching and clawing at me as I passed. Young Newby says it’s going to be the worst storm for years, and that he’s very glad he’s farming inland--not on the bay. He says that, after midnight, if it keeps on, the marsh will be holding to its hair!” A chill not of the striving elements came over Lancaster. For the first time he thought of Brack since Hamer’s call on the wire. Where was he to-night? He had prophesied this storm, and prayed over it. Was his madness really about to be justified? He would know by the time he got down to the “Duke.” If Brack was there he needn’t worry, though of course he wasn’t doing anything so absurd. But if he wasn’t there? Bluecaster too; not a sign of him all day. Well, to-morrow he would laugh at all this! In the meantime, he heard Dandy speaking again. He had made no answer to her last words, but had merely gone on splashing beside her without offering to help her, probably with his head full of some stupid farm-person she had never heard of. She thought him more unkind with every minute that passed. “It will be dreadful at Watters to-night, if the wind keeps up!” she went on presently. “I shall lie awake all the time, and shiver and shake. Watters just purrs in a wind! You’d think it liked to feel its joints cracking and its slates flying and the big trees threatening it on all sides. _It_ isn’t frightened an atom, but _I_ am. I never remember being frightened at Halsted. I wish we were back there. I used to think I was getting to love the country, but now I’m almost sure I hate it!” In her vehemence she stumbled into the side, and when he had picked her out again they could see, grown accustomed to the dark, the straining blackness of a giant tree beyond the still, black break in the hedge.