The
mournful western light coming from behind the house struck the river
here and there; almost everything else was gray and dark. A mountain
ash, just outside the window, brushed the panes every now and then; and
in the silence every surrounding sound--the rare movements in the next
room, the voices of quarrelling children round the door of a
neighbouring house, the far-off barking of dogs--made itself distinctly
audible.

Suddenly Catherine, sunk in painful reverie, noticed that the mutterings
from the bed had ceased for some little time. She turned her chair, and
was startled to find those weird eyes fixed with recognition on herself.
There was a curious malign intensity, a curious triumph in them.

'It must be--eight o'clock,' said the gasping voice--'_eight o'clock_;'
and the tone became a whisper, as though the idea thus half
involuntarily revealed had been drawn jealously back into the
strongholds of consciousness.

'Mary,' said Catherine, falling on her knees beside the bed, and taking
one of the restless hands forcibly into her own, 'can't you put this
thought away from you? We are not the playthings of evil spirits--we are
the children of God! We are in His hands. No evil thing can harm us
against His will.'

It was the first time for many days she had spoken openly of the thought
which was in the mind of all, and her whole pleading soul was in her
pale, beautiful face. There was no response in the sick girl's
countenance, and again that look of triumph, of sinister exultation.
They had tried to cheat her into sleeping, and living, and in spite of
them, at the supreme moment, every sense was awake and expectant. To
what was the materialised peasant imagination looking forward? To an
actual call, an actual following to the free mountain-side, the rush of
the wind, the phantom figure floating on before her, bearing her into
the heart of the storm? Dread was gone, pain was gone; there was only
rapt excitement and fierce anticipation.

'Mary,' said Catherine again, mistaking her mood for one of tense
defiance and despair, 'Mary, if I were to go out now and leave Mrs.
Irwin with you, and if I were to go up all the way to the top of
Shanmoss and back again, and if I could tell you there was nothing
there, nothing!--if I were to stay out till the dark has come--it will
be here in half an hour--and you could be quite sure when you saw me
again, that there was nothing near you but the dear old hills, and the
po