last. He could not even
have a cigar to help to pass the time, for he had an idea that Mrs.
Middleton disliked the smell of smoke. He stared at the trees and the
sky, drew letters in the dust with the end of a stick, stirred up a
small ants' nest, examined the structure of a dog-rose or two and some
buttercups, and compared the flavors of different kinds of leaves. He
came forward as Dr. Grey went by. The doctor stopped to tell him that
Miss Langton was certainly weaker. "But she may linger some hours yet,"
he added; and he was going on his way when a thought seemed to strike
him. "Are you staying at the farm?" he asked.

"No: they've enough without me. I'm at the little public-house close
by."

"Going there for some luncheon?"

Hardwicke supposed so.

"Can't you get young Thorne to go with you? He looks utterly exhausted."

Hardwicke went off on his mission, but he could not persuade him to
stir. "All right!" he said at last: "then I shall bring you something to
eat here." Percival agreed to that compromise, and owned afterward that
he felt better for the food he had taken.

The slow hours of the afternoon went wearily by. The rector of
Fordborough came; Dr. Grey came again; Mrs. Latimer passed two or three
times. The sky began to grow red toward the west once more, and the
cawing rooks flew homeward, past the window where Percival sat waiting
vainly for the summons which did not come.

Hardwicke, released from his self-imposed duty, came to see if Percival
would go with him for half an hour or so to the Latimer Arms. "I've got
a kind of tea-dinner," he said--"chops and that sort of thing. You'd
better have some." But it was of no use. So when he came back to the
house the good-natured fellow brought some more provisions, and begged
Lucy Greenwell to make some tea, which he carried up.

"Where are you going to spend the night?" asked Harry, coming up again
when he had taken away the cup and plate.

"Here," said Percival. He sat with his hands clasped behind his head and
one leg drawn up on the seat. His face was sharply defined against the
square of sunset sky.

Hardwicke stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at him. "But
you can't sleep here," he said.

"That doesn't matter much. Sleeping or waking, here I stay."

A sudden hope flashed in his eyes, for the door of Sissy's room opened,
and, closing it behind her, Mrs. Middleton came out and looked up and
down the passage. But she called "Harr