To preserve the peace the police had had to put an end to the meeting, whereupon Dan, spitting contemptuously and snorting about "The Cottonies" and "the Cotton balls," had harnessed his horse at the Plough Inn and driven home in a dull rage. It had been ten o'clock when he got back to Baldromma, and after unharnessing his horse in his undrained stable, and wiping his best boots with a wisp of straw, he had stepped round to the kitchen. His wife was there, beating time on the hearthstone to a long-drawn Methodist hymn while she stirred the porridge in a pot that hung over a slow peat fire. "_Tell me the old, old story, .... Of Jesus and His love._" "Your daughter isn't back then?" said Dan with a growl. "Be raisonable, man," said Mrs. Collister. "Eleven o'clock thou said, and it's only a piece after ten yet." She poured out the porridge and hobbled to the dairy for a basin of milk, and then Dan, after a sour silence, sat down to his supper. "They were telling me in Ramsey," he said, making noises with his spoon, "that the Spaker's son went up to Douglas to-day." "Like enough!" said Mrs. Collister. "I'll go bail your girl went up to meet him." "Sakes alive, man veen, what for should thou be saying that?" "She's fit enough for it anyway." "But what has the girl done? Twenty-four years for Spring and not a man at her yet." "Chut! Once they cut the cables that sort is the worst that's going. She'd be an angel itself though to stand up against a waistrel like yander." "Bessie will be home for eleven," said Mrs. Collister. "She'd better, or she'll find Dan Baldromma a man of his word, ma'am." After that there was another sour silence in which both watched the open-faced clock whose pendulum swung by the wall. Tick, tick tick, said the clock. To the man it was going slowly, to the woman it seemed to fly. But hardly had the fingers pointed to eleven, or the chain begun to shake for the first stroke of the hour, when Dan was at the door, bolting and locking it. "Will thou not give the girl a few minutes' grace, even?" "Not half a minute." "But the ten train hasn't whistled at the bridge yet." "I've nothing to do with trains, Misthress Collister. Eleven o'clock, I said, and now it's eleven and better." "But surely thou'll never shut thy door on a poor girl in the middle of the night?" "There's others that's open to her--she said so herself, remember. She's not for coming home to-night, so take your candle and get to bed, woman." "But the train must be late--I'll wait up myself for her." "You might burn your candle to the snuff--she's not for coming, I tell you." "But she promised me--faithfully promised me...." "Get to bed, ma'am. I wonder you're not thinking shame, making excuses for the bad doings of your by-child, and you a Methodist." The woman was on the verge of tears. "Shame enough it is, Dan Collister, when a mother has to shut her heart to her own child if she's not to show disrespect to her husband."