f, and shading
her eyes against the level sun. No one ever knew how the old lady had
found strength to walk the distance from the house--for walked it she had.
It may have been that some sudden fright impelled her; some unreasoning
panic for the children's safety. Old Rosewarne, seated on horseback and
watching the rick-makers in the far corner, caught sight of her, cantered
across to the gate, dismounted there, and led her home on his arm; and the
children had followed. So far as Myra could remember, nothing came of
this apparition--nothing except that she found herself, a little later,
seated in her grandmother's dressing-room and reading aloud; and this must
have happened soon after they reached home, for while she read she heard
the fowls settling themselves to roost in the hen-house beneath the open
window. Three weeks later Mrs. Rosewarne was dead--had faded out like a
shadow; and since then the children had run wild, no one constraining them
to tasks.

She sat with eyes fixed sullenly on Hester, and fingers ready at any
moment to make the sign of the cross. To the other children she paid no
heed; they were merely so many victims entrapped, ready to be changed into
birds and put into cages, as in _Jorinda and Jorindel_. "Why was this
woman separating the girls from the boys? She should not take away Clem.
Let her try!" Hester had too much tact. Having marshalled the others,
she set a pen and copy-book before Myra, and bending over Clem, asked him
in the gentlest voice to sit and wait; she would come back to him in a
moment (she promised) and with a pretty game for him to play.

"Don't you listen to a single word she says," Myra whispered; but Clem had
already taken his seat.

Hester had sent for a book of letters in raised type for the blind boy.
Before setting him down to this, however, she wished to try the suppleness
and accuracy of his touch with some simple reed-plaiting.

The reeds lay within the cupboard across the room. She went to fetch
them, and at this moment the schoolroom door opened behind her.

She heard the lift of the latch, and turned with a smile. But the smile
faded almost at once as she recognised her visitor. It was Tom
Trevarthen, and he entered with a grin and a defiant, jaunty swagger which
did not at all become him.

In an instant she scented danger, and felt her cheeks paling; but she
lifted her head none the less, looking him straight in the eyes.

"I beg your pardon.