The sun had just set and there was no colour in the west, but over all the homely, wind-swept landscape a solemn and unearthly light shone and slowly passed, shone and slowly passed. "Look up," said my companion, turning a face of flame towards me. I looked up into the sky, as into an enormous furnace. Gigantic rolling clouds of flame were sweeping before the roaring wind like some vast prairie fire across the firmament. As they passed overhead, the reflection of the lurid light on them was smitten earthwards, and passed with them, making everything it traversed clear as noon--the lion on the swinging sign of the public-house just across the water, the delicate tracery of the church windows, the virginia creeper on my cottage porch. "I have only seen an afterglow like that once in my life," my companion said, "and that was in Teneriffe." A few moments more, and the sky paled to grey. The darkness came down with tropical suddenness. I made a movement forwards. "Shall I not be seen if I follow you through the village in these weird clothes?" she said civilly, as one who hesitates to make a suggestion. "Where is your house?" "My cot--it is not a house--is just at the end of those trees," I said. "It is the only one close to the park gates. It has virginia creeper over the porch, and a white gate." "It sounds charming." "But how on earth are we to get there?" I groaned. "And some one may come along this path at any moment." The dusk was falling rapidly. Candles were beginning to twinkle in latticed windows. A yellow light from the public-house made an impassable streak across the road. Cheerful voices were coming along the meadow path behind us. What was to be done? "Go home," she said steadily. "I will find my own way." "But my servant?" "Make your mind easy. She will not see me. I shall not ring the bell. Have you a dog?" "No. My dear little Lindo----" "It's going to be a black night. I shall be in the porch half an hour after dark." She went swiftly from me, and as the voices drew near I saw her pick her way noiselessly into one of the great ditches, and stand motionless in the water, obliterated against a pollard willow. I hurried home. My feet were quite wet, and even my stockings--a thing that had not happened to me for years. I changed at once, and took five drops of camphor on a lump of sugar. It would be extraordinarily inconvenient if I were to take cold, with my tendency to bronchial catarrh. I have no time to be ill in my busy life. Was not "Broodings beside the Dieben" being finished in hot haste for an eager publisher? And had I not promised to give away the Sunday-school prizes at Forlinghorn a fortnight hence? It was half-past six. My garden boy was pumping in the scullery. He kept his tools in the stable, and it was his duty to lock it up and hang the key on the nail inside the scullery door.