is that?"
he cried.

He had been sitting with his back to the barn, but he turned, as he
spoke, so as to face it. Something had startled him--a movement, a
rustling in the straw behind him. "What is that?" he asked again, his
hand on the table, his face lowering and watchful.

The girl had risen also; and, as the last word passed his lips, sprang
by him with a low cry, and aimed a frantic blow with her stool at
something he could not see, something low, on the floor.

"What is it?" he asked, recoiling.

"A rat!" she answered, breathless. And she aimed another blow at it.

"Where?" he asked sharply. "Where is it?" He snatched up his stool, too,
and at that moment a rat darted out of the straw, ran nimbly between his
legs, and plunged into a hole by the door. He flung the wooden stool
after it; but in vain. "It was a rat!" he said, as if until then he had
doubted it.

"Thank God!" she muttered. She was shaking all over.

He stared at her in stupid wonder. What did she mean? What had come to
her? "Have you had a sunstroke my girl?" he said suspiciously.

Her nut-brown face was a shade less brown than usual, but she met his
eyes boldly. "No," she said, "I am all right." And she added an
explanation that for the moment satisfied him. But he did not sit down
again, and when she went out he went out also. And though, as she
retired slowly to the rye fields and her work, she repeatedly looked
back at him, it was always to find his eyes fixed upon her. When this
had happened half a dozen times, a thought struck him. "How now?" he
muttered. "The rat ran out of the straw! Why?"

Nevertheless he continued to gaze after her, with a cunning look upon
his features, until she disappeared over the edge of the rift. Then he
crept back to the door of the barn, and stole in, exchanging the
sunlight for the cool darkness of the raftered building, across which a
dozen rays of light were shooting, laden with dancing motes. A pace or
two from the door he stood stock still until he had regained the use of
his eyes; then he began to peer round him. In a moment, far sooner than
he expected, he found what he sought. Half upon, and half hidden by, the
straw in the furthest corner, lay a young man, in the deep sleep of
utter exhaustion. His face, which bore traces of more than common
beauty, was white and pinched; his hair hung dank about his forehead.
His clothes were in rags; and his feet, bound up with pieces torn at
random from his b