d Miss Mosk, with a
brilliant smile, 'you know his temper and my temper.'

'You are sure it is quite safe for you to go home alone?' said Gabriel,
who was infected with the upper-class prejudice that every unmarried
girl should be provided with a chaperon.

'Safe!' echoed the dauntless Bell, in a tone of supreme contempt. 'My
dear Gabriel, I'd be safe in the middle of Timbuctoo!'

'There are many of these rough harvest labourers about here, you know.'

'I'll slap their faces if they speak to me. I'd like to see them try it,
that's all. And now, good-bye for the present, dear. I must get home as
soon as possible, for there is a storm coming, and I don't want to get
my Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes spoilt.'

When she slipped off like a white ghost into the gathering darkness,
Gabriel remained at the door and looked up to the fast clouding sky. It
was now about nine o'clock, and the night was hot and thundery, and so
airless that it was difficult to breathe. Overhead, masses of black
cloud, heavy with storm, hung low down over the town, and the earth,
panting and worn out with the heat, waited thirstily for the cool drench
of the rain. Evidently a witch-tempest was brewing in the halls of
heaven on no small scale, and Gabriel wished that it would break at once
to relieve the strain from which nature seemed to suffer. Whether it was
the fatigue of his day's labour, or the late interview with Bell which
depressed him, he did not know, but he felt singularly pessimistic and
his mind was filled with premonitions of ill. Like most people with
highly-strung natures, Gabriel was easily affected by atmospheric
influence, so no doubt the palpable electricity in the dry, hot air
depressed his nerves, but whether this was the cause of his restlessness
he could not say. He felt anxious and melancholy, and was worried by a
sense of coming ill, though what such ill might be, or from what quarter
it would come, he knew not. While thus gloomily contemplative, the great
bell of the cathedral boomed out nine deep strokes, and the hollow sound
breaking in on his reflections made him wake up, shake off his dismal
thoughts, and sent him inside to attend to his work. Yet the memory of
those forebodings occurred to him often in after days, and read by the
light of after events, he was unable to decide whether the expectation
of evil, so strongly forced upon him then, was due to natural or
supernatural causes. At present he ascribed his anxiet