How long she wandered with the child, stumbling through the darkness, Frances never knew. All that she realized and that with a deep thankfulness, was that her guide was quite sure of the way.

They spoke but little during the journey, only now and then the child’s voice, sweet and confident, broke the silence with words of encouragement.

“I’m so glad I found you.... We’re nearly there. ... Granny has a big fire that you can get dry by. ... And you can come and sleep in my bed. I can sleep with Aunt Maggie.... Are you very tired? We shall soon be there.”

And then at last there shone a glare of light in the darkness, and Frances roused herself to speech.

“What is that light?”

“That is Tetherstones,” said the child. “That is home.”

Ah, home! Somehow the words brought the hot tears to Frances’ eyes. She was weak with the long struggle, with the mingled fear and pain and exhaustion of the day. She longed—very desperately she longed—for some safe shelter where she could sink down, and this child spoke to her of home. She could not check her tears.

“Never mind!” said the voice at her side. “Don’t cry! We are just there. Here is the gate!”

Frances fumbled at it, but the child opened it. They went through together and trod the smooth stones that led to the house.

The glare dazzled Frances. She went as she was led, making no effort to guide herself. They came to the porch. She heard the rustle of falling rain upon thatch, and there came to her nostrils the aromatic scent of burning wood. A great quiver went through her. This was Tetherstones—this was home.

The door opened before her. “Come in!” said the child. “We’ll find Granny.”

They entered, and then it seemed to Frances that the light became so intense that she could bear it no longer. She uttered a gasping sound, and fell against the wall. There seemed to be a great many people in front of her, a confusion of voices, and out of the indistinguishable medley she heard a man utter a terrible oath. Then there came a crash, whether within the room or within her brain she knew not. She only knew that she fell, and falling was caught by strong arms that held her up, that lifted her, that sustained her, in all the dreadful tumult in which her senses swam. She turned as one drowning, and clung to that staunch support.

“Bring her to the fire, poor thing!” said a woman’s voice, soft with pity. “Mind how you lift her, Arthur! That’s right, Oliver. You lend a hand!”

Helpless in every limb, she felt herself borne forward, and was aware of a great glow from an open fire. They laid her down before it, and she knew that she was safe. But still, as one who fears to drown, she clung to one of those strong arms that had lifted her.

“Look at that!” said another voice compassionately. “Just like a frightened child! Where did you find her, Ruthie?”

“Up in the old shed near the Stones,” said the child. “I expect she was frightened too. She was lost.”

“Let’s give her some hot milk!” said the motherly voice that had first spoken. “Move a bit, Arthur! I can’t get near her.”

“I can’t move.” It was another voice speaking—a man’s voice, short, decided. “Give me the cup! I’ll see what I can do.”

And then Frances felt the rim of a cup against her lips.

She drank—at first submissively, then hungrily. Her free hand came up to support the cup, and her eyes opened. She looked into a man’s eyes—the hard, steady eyes of Roger’s master.

“Oh!” she said weakly. “It is you!”

“There now! She knows you, does she?” It was not Roger’s master who spoke, but another man beyond her range of vision. “That’s funny, eh, Arthur? You who never look at——”

“Shut up!” said Roger’s master, briefly and rather brutally. “Get out of it, Oliver! Look after the old man!”

He held the cup again to Frances’ lips, and she drank until she drained it. Her eyes remained wide open, fixed upon those other eyes, black-browed and dominant, that had surveyed her so insolently that morning.

A quivering sigh went through her. “I shouldn’t—have come here,” she said.

He handed the cup with an imperious gesture to someone she could not see. “You’re quite safe anyhow,” he said. “There’s nothing to frighten you.”

His voice was deep and very resolute. It had the stern ring of a man accustomed to hard fighting in the arena of life. She wondered a little even in that moment of doubt and uncertainty. Somehow he did not seem to fit his surroundings. He made her think of a gladiator of ancient Rome rather than a farmer in the depths of peaceful Devon.

“I shouldn’t—have come,” she said again, speaking with difficulty. “I am sorry.”

But still her fingers clung to the rough cloth of his coat like the numbed fingers of one who fears to drown.

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for,” he said. “You’re welcome to shelter here as long as you will.” He spoke abruptly over his shoulder. “Speak to her, Mother! She’s scared out of her life.”

“Poor child!” said the woman’s voice. “And no wonder—out there alone in the fog! Who is she, I wonder? Perhaps she will tell us presently.”

The voice was refined. It had a kindly ring, but it sounded tired—too tired for any very poignant feeling. Yet it comforted Frances. It was a homely voice. With a great effort she braced herself for coherent speech.

“I am so sorry,” she said, “to intrude on you like this. I am a visitor here—lodging with Mrs. Trehearn at Brookside. My name is Frances Thorold.”

She heard the child’s voice in the background. “Aunt Maggie, you know the lady. She paints pictures, and she watched you milk the cows. Don’t you remember?”

“Why, yes, of course!” The fresh tones of the rough-haired girl took up the tale. “Of course I remember! We’ll have to get her undressed and to bed, Mother. She’ll die of cold in those wet things.”

They came about her in a crowd, as it seemed to Frances’ confused senses, but Roger’s master kept them back.

“Wait!” he said. “Get a bed ready first! Get hot blankets and brandy! She’s chilled to the bone. Make up the fire, Milly! You, Dolly, light a fire upstairs! Elsie, get the warming-pan! Lucy and Nell, go and draw some water!”

He issued his orders with a parade-like brevity that took instantaneous effect. The crowd melted magically. And still Frances clung to that solid supporting arm as if she could never bear to let go.

Suddenly, it seemed to her that she was alone with him. He bent over her and spoke.

“Tell me! What has frightened you so on the moor?”

His look compelled an answer. Even against her will she would have made it, but a violent shivering fit took her and speech became impossible. He grasped an arm of the old settle on which she lay and dragged it nearer to the fire.

“Don’t be afraid!” he said. “You’re safe enough here. Ruth!”

He raised his voice slightly. The child came and stood beside him—a small child, beautifully made, her sweet face upturned like the face of a flower that seeks the sun. Her eyes were always closed, sealed buds that no sun would ever open.

The man did not look at her. He was closely watching Frances.

“Why did you go to the Stones to-night?” he said.

“I had a dream,” said the child.

“Go on! What did you dream?” The words were peremptory but the voice was gentle. Even in that moment Frances noted the difference of tone.

There was a momentary pause, then the child spoke, her face uplifted like the face of a dreamer.

“I dreamt first about Daniel in the lions’ den, and then it turned into someone up by the Stones—someone who was lost and frightened—and praying for help. So I went to see.”

“Weren’t you afraid?” the man said.

“I? Oh no! There was nothing to frighten me. I knew the way. Besides, God was there,” the child said simply. “It was quite safe. Is the lady better now?”

“She is getting better.” The man reached out and grasped the slender shoulder nearest to him. “Come and hold her hand!” he said.

“May I? Won’t she mind?” The small fingers clasped Frances’ trembling ones. “You are not lost now,” she said softly. “You are found.”

Somehow Frances found her hold transferred. The man rose from his knees. The child nestled down by her side. A sense of peace stole upon her. She knew that she was safe. She closed her eyes to the glare of the fire and lay still....

What happened to her afterwards she never clearly recalled. She was in the hands of strangers who yet in some inexplicable way were friends. They waited upon her, tended her, succoured her with every comfort, till at last the awful shivering passed. She drifted into sleep.

It was a strange sleep of inexplicable happenings—a fevered jumble of impressions, ideas curiously mingled. Daniel in a place of lions—or was it devils?—that was oddly called “The Stones”! Daniel, lost and very frightened, praying for help! And later the coming of an angel to his deliverance!

Yes, she remembered that part of it very clearly. “My God hath sent His angel....” She heard again the voice of a little child singing in the darkness—a child who lived in utter darkness yet knew not the meaning of the word. She called to memory the closed eyes that no sun would ever open, and like a voice within her soul there came to her the words: “You are not lost now. You are found.”

No, she was not lost any longer, but she was ill, terribly ill. There came a time when sleep no longer held her and pain took possession—dreadful intervals when breathing was agony and rest a thing impossible. It stretched out into days of suffering when her very soul seemed to be lacerated with the anguish that racked her body, days when she lay in the cruel grip of a torture such as she had never imagined in all the hardships of her life. Sometimes during those days, it seemed to her that death was very near. She stood on the brink of an abyss unfathomable and felt her soul preparing as it were for that great leap into the unknown. And it had ceased to appall her, as is the merciful way of nature when the body can endure no more. There was nought to fear in Death. It was only pain—earthly pain—that had any power to torment her.

And that power was lessening, hourly, hourly lessening. She was as a prisoner chained to a rock, yet waiting for a sure deliverance. Utter weariness possessed her, a weakness so complete that there were hours together when she would lie, conscious but too exhausted for thought or feeling, and with a dim wonder watch the strangers about her bed.

They were very constantly about her—those strangers. She came to know them by name though she hardly ever spoke to them except to whisper a word of thanks for some service rendered. They would not let her speak from the very outset. They always hushed her into silence whenever she attempted it. And—since speech was very difficult—she came at last to acquiesce dumbly in all that they did.

As the pain lessened and the weakness increased, she grew to lean upon them more and more. There was always someone with her, springing up at her slightest movement to help her. Maggie—the rosy, rough-haired girl who milked the cows—spent two hours each morning and evening after milking-time in ready service upon her, or sitting working by her side. They divided themselves, the six girls, into special watches of four hours each in the twenty-four, each girl serving two hours at a time by day or by night. Frances got to know the time by these watches, for they never varied. Milly, the second girl, used to come to her in the afternoon and in the very early hours of the morning. She liked Milly, who was sensitive and anxious to please, not very strong or very capable, but always full of sympathy and never-failing attention. Elsie, the third girl, was of the boisterous open-air type. She also had a night-watch and she kept it faithfully, though she did a man’s labour on the farm and only rested for the two hours in the middle of the day that she spent in Frances’ room.

“I’m used to broken nights,” she used to say stoutly. “Maggie and I always come in for them in lambing-time.”

Then there was Dolly—a girl of considerable character and decision—Nurse Dolly—Frances used to call her, for she was the one of them all whose touch was skilful and who had any real aptitude for nursing. Lucy and Nell were the youngest—girls of twenty and nineteen. Their watches came consecutively and they used to whisper a great deal in the sick-room when one of them relieved the other. It was mainly by their means that Frances learned how her condition went, and in a vague fashion it amused her to know. But somehow she never felt vitally interested.

When Nell—who always had hay-seed sown in her chestnut hair—told Lucy in hissing undertones that the doctor said she had no strength to make a stand and would probably go very suddenly in the end, Frances, still chained to her rock above the abyss, wondered what either of them would do if that amazing moment came while she was on guard. Lucy would certainly be frightened. She had a shy and gentle way with her. But Nell—Nell was extremely young and full of ideas. She would probably do something highly original before she quitted her post to find Dolly, as, Frances heard, had been arranged among them. Nell was a jolly girl, but she had a schoolboy’s rudeness for all who came her way, and a funny boyish fashion of regarding life that appealed to Frances immensely.

There was someone on the farm, she learned from the girls’ talk, for whom everyone had the profoundest contempt. Lucy and Nell always spoke of him as “the Beast.” But who the Beast was and why he was always thus described did not transpire.

There was also Arthur, Roger’s master, who, she gathered, knew how to assert his authority even over the sometimes mutinous Nell, and commanded her unbounded respect in consequence.

Then there was Oliver—“Oliver Twist” they called him. He was evidently a humorous person and his comic sayings often caused fits of suppressed giggles behind Frances’ screen. Frances used to train her ears to catch the joke, but it always eluded her, the point smothered in laughter, after which Nell would come round to her, looking contrite, and beg her to try and get a little sleep, in the same breath dismissing Lucy brusquely from the room. Yes, Frances liked Nell. She was so delightfully and naÏvely human.

But most of all she loved little Ruth of the blind eyes, and Ruth’s granny—the patient, tired woman with the mother’s voice who had pitied her on that first evening. They were curiously alike, these two, in their patience, their gentleness, their serenity. They brought an atmosphere of peace into her room—a sense of rest that none of the sisters possessed. They always came to her together, and Ruth’s granny would speak tenderly in her tired voice, telling her she would be better soon.

She never stayed long, but Frances grew to look for her coming with a certain eagerness, so deep were the knowledge and the understanding in the grave kindly eyes. She had a feeling that this woman, with her white banded hair and sorrow-lined face was many years younger than she seemed. The blind child plainly worshipped her. “My dear Granny” was the fond term by which she always spoke of her, and it was evident to Frances that she filled the place of mother in the child’s heart. She was the petted darling of all the sisters, but this elderly woman who petted her least of all was the beloved one of her heart.

Little Ruth brought her a flower every day, and she would stay on after her granny had gone, curling up beside her on the bed, very still and quiet, sometimes whispering a little, always holding her hand. Frances loved to have her there. The child’s presence was as balm to her spirit. Even in her worst hours it comforted her to feel her near. She was the angel of her deliverance. Whenever that dreadful memory of evil assailed her, she wanted to clasp the little hand in hers, and always it brought her comfort. “My God hath sent His angel. ...”