d. She could not get the picture of those two young
things standing at the window facing the mist-drunk moor out of her
head. The sense that had come to the farm with Martin's entry into it
of something eerie and foreboding increased now with every tick of the
heavy kitchen clock. She seemed to listen now for sounds and portents.
The death-tick on the wall--was that foolish? Some men said so, but she
knew better. Had she not heard it on the very night of her
grandfather's death? She sat there and recounted to herself every
ghost-story that, in the course of a long life, had come her way. The
headless horseman, the coach with the dead travellers, the three
pirates and their swaying gibbets, the ghost of St. Dreot's churchyard,
the Wailing Woman of Clinton, and many, many others, all passed before
her, making pale her cheek and sending her heart in violent beats up
and down the scale.

The kitchen grew darker and darker. She let the underclothes lie upon
her lap. Soon she must light the lamp, but meanwhile, before the oven
she let her fancies overwhelm her, luxuriating in her terror.

Suddenly the kitchen-door was flung open. She started up with a cry.
Martin stood there and in a voice, so new to her that she seemed never
to have heard it before, he shouted, "Where's Maggie?"

She stood up in great agitation. He came towards her and she saw that
his face was violent with agitation, with a kind of rage.

"Where's Maggie?" he repeated.

She saw that he was shaking all over and it was as though he did not
know who she was.

"Maggie?" she repeated.

"My wife! My wife!" he cried, and he shouted it again as though he were
proclaiming some fact to the whole world.

"She went out," said Mrs. Bolitho, "about three hours back I should
think."

"Went out!" he stormed at her. "And in this?"

Then, before she could say another word, he was gone. It was in very
truth like an apparition.

She sat there for some time staring in front of her, still shaken by
the violence of his interruption. She went then to the kitchen-door and
listened--not a sound in the house. She went farther, out through the
passage to the hall-door. She opened it and looked out. A sea of
driving mist, billowing and driving as though by some internal breeze,
met her.

"Poor things," she said to herself. "They shouldn't be out in this."
She shut the door and went back into the house. She called, "Jim! Jim!
Where are you?" At last he came, stumping up