supper at the hotel, and rode slowly home. In the
twilight stretches of the road, where I could touch either bank of
the lane with my whip, I thought of nothing but Pasiance and her
grandfather; there was something in the half light suited to wonder and
uncertainty. It had fallen dark before I rode into the straw-yard. Two
young bullocks snuffled at me, a sleepy hen got up and ran off with a
tremendous shrieking. I stabled the horse, and walked round to the
back. It was pitch black under the apple-trees, and the windows were all
darkened. I stood there a little, everything smelled so delicious after
the rain; suddenly I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was being
watched. Have you ever felt like that on a dark night? I called out at
last: "Is any one there?" Not a sound! I walked to the gate-nothing! The
trees still dripped with tiny, soft, hissing sounds, but that was all. I
slipped round to the front, went in, barricaded the door, and groped up
to bed. But I couldn't sleep. I lay awake a long while; dozed at last,
and woke with a jump. A stealthy murmur of smothered voices was going
on quite close somewhere. It stopped. A minute passed; suddenly came the
soft thud as of something falling. I sprang out of bed and rushed to
the window. Nothing--but in the distance something that sounded like
footsteps. An owl hooted; then clear as crystal, but quite low, I heard
Pasiance singing in her room:

"The apples are ripe and ready to fall. Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to
fall."

I ran to her door and knocked.

"What is it?" she cried.

"Is anything the matter?"

"Matter?"

"Is anything the matter?"

"Ha-ha-ha-ha! Good-night!" then quite low, I heard her catch her breath,
hard, sharply. No other answer, no other sound.

I went to bed and lay awake for hours....

This evening Dan came; during supper he handed Pasiance a roll of music;
he had got it in Torquay. The shopman, he said, had told him that it was
a "corker."

It was Bach's "Chaconne." You should have seen her eyes shine, her
fingers actually tremble while she turned over the pages. Seems odd to
think of her worshipping at the shrine of Bach as odd as to think of a
wild colt running of its free will into the shafts; but that's just it
with her you can never tell. "Heavenly!" she kept saying.

John Ford put down his knife and fork.

"Heathenish stuff!" he muttered, and suddenly thundered out, "Pasiance!"

She looked up with a start, threw the music from her