f relief and welcome.

'My child, where can you have been?' Mrs. Hood cried, following the girl
who passed the garden-gate without pausing.

'Is father come?' was the reply.

'No, not yet. But where have you been? Why, you were coming from the
Heath, Emily, in the night air, and you so ill!'

'I have been to ask Mr. Dagworthy,' Emily said in a tired voice. 'He
knows nothing of him.'

Her strength bore her into the parlour, then she sank upon the couch and
closed her eyes. Mrs. Hood summoned the help of her friends.
Unresisting, with eyes still closed, silent, she was carried upstairs
and laid in her bed. Her mother sat by her. Midnight came, and Hood did
not return. Already Mrs. Hood had begun to suspect something mysterious
in Emily's anxiety; her own fears now became active. She went to the
front door and stood there with impatience, by turns angry and alarmed.
Her husband had never been so late. She returned to the bedroom.

'Emily, are you awake, dear?'

The girl's eyes opened, but she did not speak.

'Do you know any reason why your father should stay away?'

A slight shake of the head was the reply.

The deepest stillness of night was upon the house. As Mrs. Hood seated
herself with murmured bewailing of such wretchedness, there sounded a
heavy crash out on the staircase; it was followed by a peculiar ringing
reverberation. Emily rose with a shriek.

'My love--hush! hush!' said her mother. 'It's only the clock-weight
fallen. How that does shake my nerves! It did it only last week, and
gave me such a start.'

Grasping her mother's hand, the girl lay back, death-pale. The silence
was deeper than before, for not even the clock ticked....

Dagworthy could not sleep. At sunrise he had wearied himself so with
vain efforts to lie still, that he resolved to take a turn across the
Heath, and then rest if he felt able to. He rose and went into the still
morning air.

The Heath was beautiful, seen thus in the purple flush of the dawn. He
had called forth a dog to accompany him, and the animal careered in
great circles over the dewy sward, barking at the birds it started up,
leaping high from the ground, mad with the joy of life. He ran a race
with it to the wall which bounded the top of the quarry. The exercise
did him good, driving from his mind shadows which had clung about it in
the night. Beaching the wall he rested his arms upon it, and looked over
Dunfield to the glory of the rising sun. The smoke of t