owly passed, shone and slowly passed.

"Look up," said my companion, turning a face of flame towards me.

I looked up into the sky, as into an enormous furnace. Gigantic rolling
clouds of flame were sweeping before the roaring wind like some vast
prairie fire across the firmament. As they passed overhead, the
reflection of the lurid light on them was smitten earthwards, and passed
with them, making everything it traversed clear as noon--the lion on the
swinging sign of the public-house just across the water, the delicate
tracery of the church windows, the virginia creeper on my cottage porch.

"I have only seen an afterglow like that once in my life," my companion
said, "and that was in Teneriffe."

A few moments more, and the sky paled to grey. The darkness came down
with tropical suddenness. I made a movement forwards.

"Shall I not be seen if I follow you through the village in these weird
clothes?" she said civilly, as one who hesitates to make a suggestion.
"Where is your house?"

"My cot--it is not a house--is just at the end of those trees," I said.
"It is the only one close to the park gates. It has virginia creeper
over the porch, and a white gate."

"It sounds charming."

"But how on earth are we to get there?" I groaned. "And some one may
come along this path at any moment."

The dusk was falling rapidly. Candles were beginning to twinkle in
latticed windows. A yellow light from the public-house made an
impassable streak across the road. Cheerful voices were coming along the
meadow path behind us. What was to be done?

"Go home," she said steadily. "I will find my own way."

"But my servant?"

"Make your mind easy. She will not see me. I shall not ring the bell.
Have you a dog?"

"No. My dear little Lindo----"

"It's going to be a black night. I shall be in the porch half an hour
after dark."

She went swiftly from me, and as the voices drew near I saw her pick her
way noiselessly into one of the great ditches, and stand motionless in
the water, obliterated against a pollard willow.

I hurried home. My feet were quite wet, and even my stockings--a thing
that had not happened to me for years. I changed at once, and took five
drops of camphor on a lump of sugar. It would be extraordinarily
inconvenient if I were to take cold, with my tendency to bronchial
catarrh. I have no time to be ill in my busy life. Was not "Broodings
beside the Dieben" being finished in hot haste for an eager publishe