ly afraid that Dempsey
wouldn't know her.

Then Rachel wrapped them up in their land-army waterproofs, and saw them
off, carrying an electric torch to guide them safely through the bit of
lane under the trees. But there was a moon rising, and the fog was less.

"Ain't she just kind?--don't you just love her?" said Jenny ecstatically
to Betty, as they turned back to wave their farewells again to the figure
standing in the doorway.

Betty assented. But they were both greatly astonished. For Rachel did not
in general take much personal notice of them.

They were no sooner out of sight than Rachel went to look at the clock in
the kitchen. Ten minutes to seven. Two hours to wait. How were they
going to be got through?

She went out aimlessly into the farm-yard, where the farm buildings stood
in a faintly luminous mist, the hill-side behind them, and the climbing
woods. To her left, across the fields ran the road climbing to the
miniature pass, whence it descended steeply to the plain beyond. And on
the further side of the road lay her own fields, with alternating bands
of plough-land and stubble, and the hedge-row trees standing ghostly and
separate in the light haze.

She was alone in the farm, in all that landscape the only living thing at
the moment, except for the animals. A tense energy of will seemed to
possess her. She was defending herself--defending Ellesborough--and
their joint lives. How was she going to do it? She didn't know. But the
passion in her blood would give her strength--would see her through.

In the old barn, the cows were munching peacefully. The air was sweet
with their breath, and with the hay piled in their cribs. Rachel wandered
noiselessly amongst them, and they turned their large eyes slowly to look
at her, and the small lantern she carried. In the stables, too, not a
sound, but an occasional swishing and champing. Rachel hung up the
lantern, and sat down on a truss of hay, idly watching the rays of light
striking up into the cross-beams of the roof, and on the shining flanks
of the horses. Her mind was going at a great speed. And all in a
moment--without any clear consciousness of the strange thoughts that had
been running through her brain--an intuition struck through her.

_Roger_!--it was he who had been playing the ghost--he who had been seen
haunting the farm--who had scared Halsey--_Roger_! come to spy upon
her and her lover! Once the idea suggested itself, she was certain of
it-