Her child being dead she no longer loved it. All she had to do was to bury it away somewhere, and then everything would go on as she had intended. Meantime (before going to sleep) she had taken her precautions. Nobody must know. If there had been reasons why she should not take her mother into her confidence last night they were now increased tenfold. After a while her mother came up with her breakfast. A veil seemed to dim the old woman's eyes--she looked as if she had been crying. "How are thou now, bogh?" "Better! Much better! I told you I should be better in the morning." The old woman was silent for a moment and then said, "Thou were not up and downstairs in the night, Bessie?" "'Deed no! Why should you think so?" "Because I shut the wash-house door when I went to bed and it was open when I came down in the morning." Bessie's lips trembled, but she made no answer. A little later she heard her step-father talking loudly in the kitchen. He had seen the Speaker, having waited all day for him. There had been a stormy scene. The big man had foamed at the mouth, talked about blackmail, threatened to turn him out of the farm at Hollantide, and finally shouted for Tom Kertnode, his steward, to fling him into the road. "I lave it with you, Sir," Dan had answered. "If you prefer the new Dempster, when he comes, to see justice done to the girl, it's all as one to me." Bessie could have laughed. Wicked, selfish, scheming--how she was going to defeat it! All morning she lay quiet, thinking out her plans. Half a mile up the glen there was a large stone of irregular shape, surrounded by a wild tangle of briar and gorse. The Manx called it the _Claghny-Dooiney-marroo_--the dead man's stone, the body of a murdered man having been found on it. By reason of this gruesome association of the bloody hand upon it, few approached the stone by day and the bravest man (unless he were in drink) would hesitate to go near it by night. Bessie decided to bury her child under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_. It would lie hidden for ever there; nobody would find it. The day was long in passing, for Bessie was waiting for the night. She heard the young lambs bleating in the fields and the cocks crowing in the haggard. A linnet perched on the ledge of her skylight (her mother had opened it) and looked in on her and sang. At length the sky darkened and night fell. The moon (it was in its first quarter) sailed across her patch of sky and disappeared. Once or twice the skylight was aglow with a palpitating red light--someone was burning gorse on the mountains. But the fires died down and then there was nothing save the sky with its stars. Her mother came again to say good-night. She had the pitiful look of a woman who was struggling to keep back her tears. "Wilt thou not sit up, Bessie, while I make thy bed for thee?" Bessie started and then stammered: "Oh, no! I mean .... it will do in the morning."