Being comforted by this thought, and feeling cold, for the fire had gone out, she crept upstairs. It was hard to go by Bessie's room on the landing. Every night for years she had stopped there on her way to bed. And in the winter, when the wind in the trees in the glen made a roar like the sea, she had called through the closed door: "Art thou warm enough, Bessie, or will I bring thee my flannel petticoat?" And now the door was open and the room was empty! Dan was still asleep when she got back to the bedroom and her approach did not awaken him, so she fumbled her way to the bed (knowing where she was when her feet touched the warm sheepskin that lay by the side of it) and then opened the clothes and crept in. The cold air she brought with her awakened Dan, and he turned on the pillow and said, "You've not been letting in that girl of yours, have you?" "No!" Dan made a grunt of satisfaction, and then said, with his face to the wall, "Remember, you'll have to be up early to milk for yourself in the morning." "Yes." Then came a yawn, and then a snore, and then silence fell on the little house. II Bessie had run all the way to the station and then found that the train had nearly half-an-hour to wait for the passengers by the last of the day's steamers. The carriages were full of English visitors, but there were very few Manx people and she could not see Susie anywhere. This vexed her with the thought of having to tear herself away a good hour earlier than anybody else. It was all her mother's fault--getting her to make that ridiculous promise. From such thoughts, as the train ran into the country, her mind swung back to the memory of Stowell. She recalled his looks, his smile, his whole person, and every word he had said to her down to the moment of that burning kiss. What pleased her most was the certainty that he had never kissed a girl before. The trembling of his lips, when they were lip to lip, told her that. And in spite of all that had been said of him she was sure he had never had a woman in his arms until to-night--never! And she? Well, she had never before been kissed by a man. Alick Gell? She was only a child then. Kiss-in-the-ring at Michael Fair? Chut! A girl felt that no more than the wind blowing over her bare cheek. By the clocks at the wayside stations she saw she was going to be late getting home, but she didn't care. Dan Baldromma wasn't fool enough to shut her out. But let him if he liked to! Where would he go to get another girl to work for her wages--summer and winter, as if the creatures had been her own, up all hours calving, and out before the dawn in the lambing season, when the hoar-frost was on the fields?