ads who could sport unseen in the murk daylight, but must
fly under each shrub for refuge in the sudden sunshine. Close at his
feet lay the patch of cabbages--purple cabbages they were, throwing back
from each glossy leaf and stalk infinite gradations of crimson light.
Parts of the leaves were not glossy but were covered with opaque bloom
of tender blue, and here and there a leaf had been broken, disclosing
scarlet veins. They were very beautiful--Skelton stood looking down into
their depth of colour.

It had been difficult for him to conjecture a possible cause for the
phantom he had thought he saw a week before, but one theory which had
floated in his mind had been that from these cabbages, which had lain a
trifle too long in sun and moisture; gases might have arisen which had
disturbed his senses. It was true that his theory did not account for
other instances of the same optical delusion to which the talk of the
ploughman had seemed to point, but Skelton could not bring himself to
attach much importance to his words. He meditated on them now as he
stood.

'I dare not go to the young woman and ask her to show me her "shadder."
If she knew I was here she would only try to defeat my purpose. I _can_
only interview her neighbours; and this first rustic whom I questioned
shut himself up like an oyster; if all the rest act in this way, what
can I do? And if I can hear all the vulgar superstition there is to be
heard, will there be in the whole of it the indication of a single
fact?'

So he mused by the road-side while the sun hung in the dream temple of
fire made by the chasm of cloud. Then the earth moved onward into the
night, and he walked on upon his curious errand.

The darkness of evening had already fallen, and he was still about a
mile from the village when he discerned a woman coming towards him on
the road. It was the very woman about whom his mind was occupied. There
was a house at one side; the gate leading to it was close to him, and,
not wishing to be recognised at the moment, he turned in through it to
wait in the darkness of some garden shrubs till she had passed.

But she did not pass. She came up, walking more and more slowly, till
she stood on the road outside the gate. She looked up and down the road
with a hesitating air, and then, clasping her hands behind her, leaned
back against a heavy gate-post and composed herself to wait. There was
light enough to see her, for there was a moon behind the c