Farmer Giles, as I have said, was a studious, often absent-minded man. There was not much to do at that season and in such weather, and what there was, some amount of supervision on his part was enough for. After his early dinner he got out his books for an hour or two's quiet reading till it should be time to set off to meet his darlings. No fear of his forgetting _that_ time, but till the clock struck, and he saw it was approaching nearly, he never looked out--he was unconscious of the rapid growth of the lurid, steely clouds; he had no idea that the snowflakes were already falling, falling, more and more closely and thickly with each instant that passed. Then rose the storm spirit and issued his orders--all too quickly obeyed. Before Barnett Giles had left the village street he found himself in what now-a-days would be called a "blizzard". And his pale face grew paler, and his heart beat as if to choke him, when at last he reached the first stile and stood there panting, to regain his breath. It was all he could do to battle on through the fury of the wind, the blinding, whirling snow, which seemed to envelop him as if in sheets. Not for many and many a day will that awful snowstorm be forgotten in Scarshire. * * * * * It was at the appointed trysting place they found him--"half-way between the stiles". But not till late that evening, when Betsy, more alarmed by his absence than by her mistress's not returning, at last struggled out through the deep-lying snow to alarm the nearest neighbours. "The missis and Miss Nell will have stayed the night in the town," she said. "But I misdoubt me if the master will ever have got so far, though he may have been tempted on when he did not meet them." By this time the fury of the storm had spent itself, and they found poor Giles after a not very protracted search, and brought him home--dead, they thought at first. No, he was not dead, but it was less than half _life_ that he returned to. For his first inquiry late the next day, when glimmering consciousness had begun to revive--"Marion, the baby?"--seemed by some subtle instinct to answer itself truthfully, in spite of the kindly endeavour to deceive him for the time. "Dead!" he murmured. "I knew it. Half-way between the stiles," and he turned his face to the wall. They almost wished he had died too--the rough but kind-hearted country-folk who were his neighbours. But he lived. He never asked and never knew the details of the tragedy, which, indeed, was never fully known by any one.