About seven o’clock the windows of heaven were opened, and torrents of rain fell--not the storm for which everybody had been looking, but only the tail of the storm, which sounded all round the horizon in distant dull reports, like a battle going on a dozen miles away, and the tremendous downpour of rain. She said to herself, “In such a night they can never go,” with a mingled happiness and despair--happiness to put off the inevitable, to gain perhaps a propitious moment, and supplicate her son not to go; and despair in the prospect of another twenty-four hours of misery like this, the dreadful suspense, the terror of she knew not what. When the first darkening of the twilight began, Mrs Ogilvy began to think of another night to go through, and Lew’s laughing threats, and the devil in his eyes. He had said there would be time to talk of that to-night. Perhaps he would murder her to-night; and all the country-side would believe it was her son, and curse him, though it would not be Robbie--not Robbie, who had saved her once, but perhaps might not again. She asked herself whether it would not be better to go away somewhere, to save herself and, above all, them, from such a dreadful temptation. But where could she go, exposing the misery of her house? and how did she know that something might not happen which would make her presence a protection to them? She gazed out from the window through the rain, and it occurred to her that she could always run out there and hide herself among the trees. They would not think of looking for her there. She would be safe there, or at least---- This idea gave her a little comfort. How could he find her in the dark, in the heavy rain, among her own trees?