"I shall leave it now till well on into the new year," he told himself; "then, if my feelings be so fierce and fiery as they seem to be at present, I might offer for to go walking again. There’s nought like a walk for helping a male to see into the female mind. ’Twas Crocker, I remember, who said in the bar that if you could get a girl to laugh at your jokes, ’twas a great thing done. But ’twill have to be something out of the common funny to make that woman laugh. And as to making a joke--I don’t know I’m sure." *CHAPTER XIII* *RHODA PASSES BY* A great uncertainty prevailed above Margaret Bowden, where she sat on the lofty side of Lether Tor before noon and waited to meet Bartley. The aerial doubt was reflected on earth in shadows and darkness shot with fitful light; an increasing opacity threatened rain; yet, where the vapours crowded most gloomily and massed their hooded cowls, light and wind would break their conclaves and scatter them upon the humid bosom of the Moor. Through this welter, sunshafts fell and flashed over the grey and russet of the wilderness. A sort of mystery belonged to the day seen in its huge encounter between cloud legions and the light of heaven. Strange things might have been happening within the penetralia of the fog-banks, where they drove through the valleys gloomily. There was an air of mighty preparation, of imminent explosion, of forces stealthily taking stand and making ready to declare themselves in elemental encounter between the armies of the sun and the rain. Light and darkness joined battle, and Mother Earth lowered heavily, in mood to welcome the victory of her own innumerable cloud children. The sobriety of the hour increased. The distant details of the land faded; the tors ascended solemn and purple above the grey. Yet, through loopholes in the driving fog, the sun still shot his arrows strongly and, where they fell, there broke forth fire on dene and dingle, and small roof-tree isolated in the loneliness. The watcher marked a sudden shaft sweep the vale of Kingsett with a besom of light, while another radiant gleam broke the clouds, descended upon her old home, and set the far-off whitewash glimmering like a jewel at the throat of Dennycoombe. Now the high lands southerly shone for a moment; now the ragged crest of Sheep’s Tor was glorified with a nimbus of light, that revolved in a broad, wet fan, and then shut up again, as the clouds thrust between sun and earth.