a few
minutes."

"Shall I go with you?"

"O no. I am only going to the gate."

She arose, but before she had time to get out of the room a loud rapping
began upon the front door.

"I'll go--I'll go," said Eustacia in an unusually quick tone for her;
and she glanced eagerly towards the window whence the moth had flown;
but nothing appeared there.

"You had better not at this time of the evening," he said. Clym stepped
before her into the passage, and Eustacia waited, her somnolent manner
covering her inner heat and agitation.

She listened, and Clym opened the door. No words were uttered outside,
and presently he closed it and came back, saying, "Nobody was there. I
wonder what that could have meant?"

He was left to wonder during the rest of the evening, for no explanation
offered itself, and Eustacia said nothing, the additional fact that she
knew of only adding more mystery to the performance.

Meanwhile a little drama had been acted outside which saved Eustacia
from all possibility of compromising herself that evening at least.
Whilst Wildeve had been preparing his moth-signal another person had
come behind him up to the gate. This man, who carried a gun in his hand,
looked on for a moment at the other's operation by the window, walked
up to the house, knocked at the door, and then vanished round the corner
and over the hedge.

"Damn him!" said Wildeve. "He has been watching me again."

As his signal had been rendered futile by this uproarious rapping
Wildeve withdrew, passed out at the gate, and walked quickly down the
path without thinking of anything except getting away unnoticed. Halfway
down the hill the path ran near a knot of stunted hollies, which in the
general darkness of the scene stood as the pupil in a black eye. When
Wildeve reached this point a report startled his ear, and a few spent
gunshots fell among the leaves around him.

There was no doubt that he himself was the cause of that gun's
discharge; and he rushed into the clump of hollies, beating the bushes
furiously with his stick; but nobody was there. This attack was a
more serious matter than the last, and it was some time before Wildeve
recovered his equanimity. A new and most unpleasant system of menace
had begun, and the intent appeared to be to do him grievous bodily harm.
Wildeve had looked upon Venn's first attempt as a species of horseplay,
which the reddleman had indulged in for want of knowing better; but
now the boundary