Bluecaster looked round the assembly with his shy, appeasing smile. His face was rather pale, but his voice was even quieter than usual. “Are there many sheep out on the mosses, to-night?” After the first stare of wonder, anxiety rolled like a wave from one face to another, each looking into each and back again to his lordship, and then the answers broke round the table: “Twenty in t’ lower meader--fourteen on t’ middle moss--nay, I’ve all mine penned--seventeen--ten--why, what’s the stir? Storm’s nowt, is it?” Holliday’s lads got up and looked at the door, remembering the precious stock on the lowest land of all. Other men followed their example. Only Lup sat on, with his eyes fixed on Lanty. “The tide is for one o’clock,” said Bluecaster. “The wind may bring it earlier. It will be a big tide.” He said no more, but the room emptied as if by magic, the men jerking their good-nights over their shoulders as they went on. “You will forgive me?” the intruder said to the host. Outside, he motioned Lancaster into his car. “Pippin!” he ordered, “and----if we can get there,” he added, under his breath. The agent looked at him. “Is it coming?” he asked. “It is here,” said Bluecaster. * * * * * As Brack caught the dread sound that had risen so often through his tortured dreams, he uttered a cry of such agony that Francey shrank beside him. Thrusting her out at the gate of Ladyford, he leaped after her to the ground and stood straining into the dark over the sea. Then suddenly he began to run in the direction from which they had come, gasping and beating against the air in a fresh effort to get back to the Pride. But before he had gone a hundred yards, he saw ahead of him, towering over the Let, a white mountain of water as if the whole of the tidal wave had swerved and mounted its barrier. On a screamed prayer he turned and raced for his life with the monster behind him, and, as he reached the gate, a galloping horse and rocking trap burst past him into the yard, a flood also at its heels. The water poured after them up the slope, and above the shriek of the wind they heard the roar of the full tide as it swung on and past to the top of the bay. In the kitchen, the frightened women and the roused hands were busy moving food and valuables as the sea came in at the door, until presently it was standing two feet deep on the flags. Michael and Lup (for they had driven together) came in at the back after they had stabled the horse, and a short consultation was held in the larder, raised by stone steps above the level of the kitchen. Brack had sunk into a kind of stupor in a corner.