Betsey shivered a little. She was ashamed of the thrills that were running through her and the tendency of her teeth to chatter unless she kept them firmly closed. They walked briskly, but some one who came behind them was walking quicker still. A man passed them as they trudged upward, a man quite indistinguishable in the dark, save for the faint white of his collar and of his face. Betsey could make out that he was a broad person, not very tall, with an alert, though rather heavy step. They lagged a little after he had passed, to let him get well ahead of them so that they could go on with the discussion of their plans unheard. “Usually it’s not very late when the light comes,” David said. “I don’t believe we will have very long to wait.” In spite of his haste, the man who had passed them must have lingered a moment at the Reynolds’ gate, for he was only just opening it and going up the walk as they came by. The light from the cottage windows fell upon him as he approached the door and showed his figure more clearly although his face was still hidden. Betsey looked at him curiously but David seemed too much occupied to give him more than a passing glance. They left the lane, skirted the wall and came finally to the place they sought. “Now,” directed David, “here is a broken tree leaning against the wall. Up you go.” With a little assistance and not much scrambling, she clambered to the top of the wall. They were at the back of the house here, with the nearest line of blackened ruin not a hundred feet away. A spreading willow grew so close to the wall that its feathery boughs brushed Elizabeth’s hair and passed smooth fingers across her cheek. The stones were warm under their hands, from the past day’s sun, their heads were among the leaves and birds’ nests, very high, it seemed, above the ground. The whole desolate place before them was very still. “The moon will be up presently,” David whispered, “so I think It will come soon, while it is still dark.” Betsey trembled a little in the warm night air, but said nothing. The minutes passed, then a half hour, finally the hour itself struck from a spire in the village. The strokes sounded very thin and far away as the night wind carried them. A faint cow bell jingled in a distant field, a comfortable, friendly sound that Elizabeth missed when it moved and died away. They began to relax their tense muscles as the time passed slowly, to swing their feet and to talk almost above their breath. “It may not be coming to-night,” said David, “we will not wait much longer.” “That man at the Reynolds’ gate, I wonder what he wanted,” observed Betsey. “It was rather late for just ordinary visitors. Did you notice him, David?” “When the light fell on him I thought I had seen him before,” he answered. “Yet after all it was no one I knew, just a man I saw in the village this morning by the post office.”