went to the window. The rain had come--and was falling heavily.
The view on the moor was fast disappearing in mist and darkness.

"Pleasant weather to travel in!" he said.

"The railway!" Anne exclaimed, impatiently. "It's getting late. See
about the railway!"

Arnold walked to the fire-place to ring the bell. The railway time-table
hanging over it met his eye.

"Here's the information I want," he said to Anne; "if I only knew how
to get at it. 'Down'--'Up'--'A. M.'--P. M.' What a cursed confusion! I
believe they do it on purpose."

Anne joined him at the fire-place.

"I understand it--I'll help you. Did you say it was the up train you
wanted?"

"What is the name of the station you stop at?"

Arnold told her. She followed the intricate net-work of lines and
figures with her finger--suddenly stopped--looked again to make
sure--and turned from the time-table with a face of blank despair. The
last train for the day had gone an hour since.

In the silence which followed that discovery, a first flash of lightning
passed across the window and the low roll of thunder sounded the
outbreak of the storm.

"What's to be done now?" asked Arnold.

In the face of the storm, Anne answered without hesitation, "You must
take a carriage, and drive."

"Drive? They told me it was three-and-twenty miles, by railway, from
the station to my place--let alone the distance from this inn to the
station."

"What does the distance matter? Mr. Brinkworth, you can't possibly stay
here!"

A second flash of lightning crossed the window; the roll of the thunder
came nearer. Even Arnold's good temper began to be a little ruffled by
Anne's determination to get rid of him. He sat down with the air of a
man who had made up his mind not to leave the house.

"Do you hear that?" he asked, as the sound of the thunder died away
grandly, and the hard pattering of the rain on the window became audible
once more. "If I ordered horses, do you think they would let me have
them, in such weather as this? And, if they did, do you suppose the
horses could face it on the moor? No, no, Miss Silvester--I am sorry to
be in the way, but the train has gone, and the night and the storm have
come. I have no choice but to stay here!"

Anne still maintained her own view, but less resolutely than before.
"After what you have told the landlady," she said, "think of the
embarrassment, the cruel embarrassment of our position, if you stop at
the inn till to-morro