a small way across the Downs that I had to lead her, it
being almost as much as both of us could do to keep our feet in the
fury of the wind. Then you go down the steep hill into the village,
and as soon as we had passed the brow, it was easy and I mounted. I
was down there in less time than it would have taken to rouse one of
those heavy-headed carters; and Doctor, he come back with me,
walking beside Brown Bess with his hand on her bridle, he not being
by any means loth to come out such a night, because, forsooth, it
was me that fetched him. Oh yes! I might have married him if I had
wanted to, and more than one better man than him; but that's neither
here nor there.

When we got in, we found Lilian kneeling by the sofa rubbing the
young man's hands as I had told her to, and his eyes were open, and
there was a bit of colour in his cheek, and he was looking at her
like as any one but a fool might have known he would look; and the
Doctor, he saw it too, and looked at me and grinned; and if I had
been God, that grin should have been his last. No, I don't mean to
be irreverent, but it's true, all the same.

Well, the arm was set, and when he was a bit easier we settled round
the fire, and he told us that his name was Edgar Linley, and he was
an artist, and had been painting the angry sunset that had come
before that night's storm, and got caught in the dusk and so lost
his way, as many do on our Downs at home, some not so lucky as him
to see a light and get to it.

This Mr. Linley had a way with him like no other man I ever see; not
only a way to please women with, but men too. I never saw my uncle
so taken up with anybody; and the long and the short of it was that
he stayed there a month, and we nursed him; and at the end of the
month I knew no more than I had known that evening when I had seen
him looking at Lilian; but he and Lilian, they had learned a deal in
that time.

And one evening I was at my bedroom window, and I see them coming up
the path in the red light of the evening, walking very close
together, and I went down very quick to the parlour, where uncle was
just come in to his tea and taking his big boots off, and I sat down
there, for I wanted to hear how they'd say it, though I knew well
enough what they had got to say. And they came in and he says, very
frank and cheery--

'Mr. Verinder,' he says, 'Lilian and I have made up our minds to
take each other, with your consent, for better, for worse.'

A