It was twenty minutes past eleven when she got down at the glen station, and there was Susie getting down also! Susie was in the sulks. Not only had Bessie deliberately lost her in the dancing-hall, but after she had hurried away to catch the ten train, knowing Bessie had promised to return by it, she had had to come back alone! This added to Bessie's vexation, and when she reached the house, and found the door locked on her, it expressed itself in her hand when she rattled the kitchen latch. Then came the scene with Dan Baldromma who shouted down at her from the upper window as if she had been a thief--it was suffocating! And when he said, "Find your bed where you've found your company," and banged down the sash on her, she flung away, crying, as well as she could for the anger that was choking her, "So I will, and you'll be sorry for it some day." At that moment she meant to sleep with Susie at the Ginger Hall Inn, and offer herself next day to one or other of the farmers who had so often asked for her. But she had not gone many steps before she reflected that all the farmers' houses would be full now and nobody could take her in until Michaelmas. No matter! She might have been no better off. Those old farmers were all the same. If it wasn't the bullying of brutes like Dan Baldromma it was the meanness of old hypocrites like Teare of Lezayre, who laid foundation stones, and put purses of money on top of them, and then went home and gave his girls cold potatoes and salt herrings for supper! That made her think of young Willie Teare. She had met him in Ramsey the day before, when he had said he was tired of slaving for his father, and meant to set up in a farm for himself as soon as he could find the right wife. But no thank you, no marrying with a farmer for her! After a woman had worn herself to the bone, keeping things together and gathering the stock, and she was doubled up with sciatica, and ought to be in bed, with somebody to wait on her, the husband was nagging and ragging her from morning to night. That was marriage! Hadn't she seen enough of it? Bessie had reached the Ginger Hall by this time, and, seeing a light in Susie's window, she was about to call up when (with Dan's insult 'Find your bed, etc.' still rankling in her mind) a startling thought seized her and made her heart leap and the hot blood to rush through and through her. There was one way to escape from Dan Baldromma and his tyrannies--Mr. Stowell! Mr. Stowell would return by the last train to Ramsey, having bachelor rooms there, in which he lived alone--so people were saying. If she were to meet him on his arrival and tell him what had happened he would find some way out for her. Of course he would! She was sure he would! Ashamed? Why should she be? People had said all they could say about a girl like her while she was a baby in arms, and who was there to say anything now?