eal. They were Pasiance and Mrs.
Hopgood; and so charming was the smell of eggs and bacon, and they had
such an air of tender enjoyment of this dark revel, that I stifled many
pangs, as I crept hungry up to bed.

In the middle of the night I woke and heard what I thought was screaming;
then it sounded like wind in trees, then like the distant shaking of a
tambourine, with the high singing of a human voice. Suddenly it
stopped--two long notes came wailing out like sobs--then utter stillness;
and though I listened for an hour or more there was no other sound ....

IV

"4th August.

......For three days after I wrote last, nothing at all happened here. I
spent the mornings on the cliff reading, and watching the sun-sparks
raining on the sea. It's grand up there with the gorse all round, the
gulls basking on the rocks, the partridges calling in the corn, and now
and then a young hawk overhead. The afternoons I spent out in the
orchard. The usual routine goes on at the farm all the
time--cow-milking, bread-baking, John Ford riding in and out, Pasiance in
her garden stripping lavender, talking to the farm hands; and the smell
of clover, and cows and hay; the sound of hens and pigs and pigeons, the
soft drawl of voices, the dull thud of the farm carts; and day by day the
apples getting redder. Then, last Monday, Pasiance was away from sunrise
till sunset--nobody saw her go--nobody knew where she had gone. It was a
wonderful, strange day, a sky of silver-grey and blue, with a drift of
wind-clouds, all the trees sighing a little, the sea heaving in a long,
low swell, the animals restless, the birds silent, except the gulls with
their old man's laughter and kitten's mewing.

A something wild was in the air; it seemed to sweep across the downs and
combe, into the very house, like a passionate tune that comes drifting to
your ears when you're sleepy. But who would have thought the absence of
that girl for a few hours could have wrought such havoc! We were like
uneasy spirits; Mrs. Hopgood's apple cheeks seemed positively to wither
before one's eyes. I came across a dairymaid and farm hand discussing it
stolidly with very downcast faces. Even Hopgood, a hard-bitten fellow
with immense shoulders, forgot his imperturbability so far as to harness
his horse, and depart on what he assured me was "just a wild-guse
chaace." It was long before John Ford gave signs of noticing that
anything was wrong, but late in the af