She went to the family clock and opened the glass, for the hour was not otherwise discernible by night, and indeed at all times was rather a thing to be investigated than beheld, so much more wall than window was there in the apartment. ‘It is nearly eight,’ said she. ‘Eight o’clock, and neither dress nor man,’ said Mrs. Hall. ‘Mother, if you think to tantalize me by talking like that, you are much mistaken! Let him be as late as he will—or stay away altogether—I don’t care,’ said Sally. But a tender, minute quaver in the negation showed that there was something forced in that statement. Mrs. Hall perceived it, and drily observed that she was not so sure about Sally not caring. ‘But perhaps you don’t care so much as I do, after all,’ she said. ‘For I see what you don’t, that it is a good and flourishing match for you; a very honourable offer in Mr. Darton. And I think I see a kind husband in him. So pray God ’twill go smooth, and wind up well.’ Sally would not listen to misgivings. Of course it would go smoothly, she asserted. ‘How you are up and down, mother!’ she went on. ‘At this moment, whatever hinders him, we are not so anxious to see him as he is to be here, and his thought runs on before him, and settles down upon us like the star in the east. Hark!’ she exclaimed, with a breath of relief, her eyes sparkling. ‘I heard something. Yes—here they are!’ The next moment her mother’s slower ear also distinguished the familiar reverberation occasioned by footsteps clambering up the roots of the sycamore. ‘Yes it sounds like them at last,’ she said. ‘Well, it is not so very late after all, considering the distance.’ The footfall ceased, and they arose, expecting a knock. They began to think it might have been, after all, some neighbouring villager under Bacchic influence, giving the centre of the road a wide berth, when their doubts were dispelled by the new-comer’s entry into the passage. The door of the room was gently opened, and there appeared, not the pair of travellers with whom we have already made acquaintance, but a pale-faced man in the garb of extreme poverty—almost in rags. ‘O, it’s a tramp—gracious me!’ said Sally, starting back. His cheeks and eye-orbits were deep concaves—rather, it might be, from natural weakness of constitution than irregular living, though there were indications that he had led no careful life. He gazed at the two women fixedly for a moment: then with an abashed, humiliated demeanour, dropped his glance to the floor, and sank into a chair without uttering a word. Sally was in advance of her mother, who had remained standing by the fire. She now tried to discern the visitor across the candles. ‘Why—mother,’ said Sally faintly, turning back to Mrs. Hall. ‘It is Phil, from Australia!’ Mrs. Hall started, and grew pale, and a fit of coughing seized the man with the ragged clothes. ‘To come home like this!’ she said. ‘O, Philip—are you ill?’