fancied himself tramping the Knoll Road homeward through the rain, and
then he muttered sullenly of the "day" that was coming to him, and the
vengeance he was returning to take; sometimes he went through the scene
with Joan herself, and again, he waited behind the hedge for his enemy,
one moment exultant, the next striving to struggle to his feet with
curses upon his lips and rage in his heart, as he caught the sound of
the advancing steps he knew so well. As he went over these scenes again
and again, it was plain enough to the listener that his vengeance had
fallen upon his own head.

The day after he received his hurts a collier dropped into "The Crown"
with a heavy stick in his hand.

"I fun this knob-stick nigh a gap i' th' hedge on th' Knoll Road," he
said. "It wur na fur fro' wheer they fun Lowrie. Happen them chaps laid
i' wait fur him an' it belongs to one o' 'em."

"Let's ha' a look at it," said a young miner, and on its being handed to
him he inspected it closely.

"Why!" he exclaimed. "It's Lowrie's own. I seed him wi' it th' day afore
he wur hurt. I know th' shape o' th' knob. How could it ha' coom theer?"

But nobody could guess. It was taken to Joan and she listened to the
story without comment. There was no reason why they should be told what
she had already discovered.

When Lowrie died, Anice and Grace were in the room with Joan. After the
first two days the visitors had dropped off. They had satisfied their
curiosity. Lowrie was not a favorite, and Joan had always seemed to
stand apart from her fellows, so they were left to themselves.

Joan was standing near the bed when there came to him his first and
last gleam of consciousness. The sun was setting, and its farewell glow
streaming through the window fell upon his disfigured face and sightless
eyes. He roused him-self, moving uneasily.

"What's up wi' me?" he muttered. "I conna see--I conna--"

Joan stepped forward.

"Feyther," she said.

Then memory seemed to return to him. An angry light shot across his
face. He flung out his hands and groaned:

"What!" he cried, "tha art theer, art tha?" and helpless and broken
as he was, he wore that moment a look Joan had long ago learned to
understand.

"Ay, feyther," she answered.

It appeared as if, during the few moments in which he lay gasping, a
full recognition of the fact that he had been baffled and beaten after
all--that his plotting had been of no avail--forced itself upon him. He
ma