“From all evil and mischief, from sin, from the crafts and assaults of the devil” ...

Someone was saying the words. Frances opened her eyes upon blank darkness, and knew that her own lips had uttered them. She was lying in some sort of shelter, though how she had come thither she had no notion. The rain was beating monotonously upon a roof of corrugated iron. She lay listening to it, feeling helpless as a prisoner clamped to the wall. And then another voice spoke in the darkness, and her heart stood still.

“That’s right. You’re better. Gad, what a fright you gave me! Now do stop raving! You’re only tired and a bit faint.”

“I am not—raving,” she said. “I am only—I am only—” Again without her conscious volition she knew herself to be uttering those words she had heard: “From all evil, and mischief, from sin, from the crafts and assaults of the devil—” She paused a moment, groping as it were for more, then:—“Good Lord, deliver us!” she said, and it was as if her soul were speaking in the darkness.

“Frances!” a voice cried sharply, and she stopped, stopped even her breathing, to listen. “Stop talking that absurd rot! Be sensible! Try to be sensible!”

“I am only—praying,” she said.

“Well, don’t! It isn’t the time for saying prayers. I want you to attend to me. You know what has happened?”

His voice sounded curt and imperious. She peered into the darkness, wishing she could see his face.

“I don’t know,” she made answer wonderingly. “How should I know?”

“I brought you here,” he said. “You fainted.”

“How stupid of me!” she murmured apologetically.

“It was rather.” His voice was grim. “But you’ve got back your senses, and for heaven’s sake keep them! This is just an old cattleshed on the moors and it’s all the shelter we shall get to-night.”

“Oh!” said Frances, and in her voice dismay and relief were strangely mingled. “It was better than the open moor. But yet—but yet——”

He spoke again with a species of humorous ruefulness. “Here we are, and here we’ve got to stay! That damned fog has defeated us. We can’t hope to move before morning.”

“I wish we had a light,” said Frances.

She was gradually getting a grasp of the situation, and though her body felt oddly heavy and her head strangely light, her wits were recovering their customary business-like balance.

“I have got a few matches,” said Montague. “Also a few cigarettes. Afraid it’s useless to attempt a fire. We should only smoke ourselves out—and possibly fire the shed as well. The only comfort we have got is a little hay, and you are lying on it.”

“Where are you?” she said.

“Here!” A hand suddenly touched her, and she started with involuntary shrinking. A great shivering came over her, and for a space she struggled to control her chattering teeth.

“You are cold,” he said.

“Yes,—dreadfully cold. But never mind! It—it’s better than being out in the open, isn’t it? You have no idea where we are?”

“I lost my way,” he said moodily.

She reached out to him a trembling hand, and realized that he was standing propped against the wall beside her. He stooped quickly, grasping her cold fingers.

“Frances, we’ve got to face it. You may as well give in to circumstances. We’re both of us helpless.”

His voice had an odd urgency. It was as if he pleaded with her.

“Oh, I quite realize that,” she said, and she strove to force a practical note into her reply. “We’ve been very unlucky, but what can’t be cured must be endured. We shall come through it somehow.”

She would have removed her hand, despite the physical reluctance to relinquish the warmth of his, but he held it fast.

“You don’t want me to go?” he said.

“Oh no!” she returned briskly. “I am not so selfish and unreasonable as that. We must just make the best of it. We must just—just——”

She broke off. Her teeth were chattering again, and in the effort to check them, she forgot the words she was trying to utter.

She felt him bend lower, and found him kneeling by her side. “It’s no good offering you my coat,” he said. “There’s no warmth in it. Besides, it’s wet through. But I’m not going to let you die of cold for all that—just for the sake of an idiotic convention. Frances—sweetheart—I’m going to hold you in my arms.”

Fear stabbed her—sharp and agonizing. “Oh no!” she said, and drew herself back from him. “Not here! Not now!”

Her hand remained locked in his, but he paused.

“Why not here—and now?” he said.

She gasped her quivering answer. “Because—because—I am not sure if I have done right in—in letting you make love to me. I have not been sure—all day.”

“You don’t love me?” he questioned.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t—possibly—know yet.”

“But you knew yesterday,” he said.

“Ah, yesterday!” The word came almost with a cry. “I was mad yesterday,” she said.

“Why mad?” he reasoned. “My dear, listen to me! Here we are—far away from everywhere—miles away from civilized society. What does it matter—what can it matter—if we throw aside these idiotic conventions just for one night? You know in your heart that it doesn’t matter one jot.”

“It does matter,” she gasped back painfully, still striving vainly to free the hand he held so closely. “It does matter.”

“That means you don’t trust me,” he said.

“I would if I could,” she made desperate answer. “But—but——”

“But—” he echoed grimly, and let her go.

She heard him get up from his knees, and breathed a sigh of thankfulness.

A moment later there came the rasp of a match and a sudden glare in the darkness. Her eyes turned instinctively, though dazzled, to the light. She saw his face, and again instinctively she shrank. For in the eyes that sought her own there burned a fire that seemed to consume her.

He was lighting a cigarette. He looked at her above it, and his look held a question she dared not answer. Again a terrible shivering caught her. The light went out, and she covered her face.

The man spoke no further word. He smoked his cigarette in the darkness till presently it was finished, and then he threw down the glowing end and ground it under his heel.

The silence between them, like the darkness, was such as could be felt. Only the drip, drip of the rain sounded—oddly metallic, like the tolling of a distant bell.

Frances sat huddled against the wall, not moving, not able to move. Her heart was beating with dull, irregular strokes, and her fear had died down. Perhaps she was too exhausted to be actively afraid. A sense of unreality had descended upon her. She had the feeling of one in a dream. Though from time to time violent shivers caught her, yet she was scarcely aware of them. Only now and then the cold seemed to pierce her like a knife that reached her very soul.

And when that happened she always found herself repeating in broken phrases the prayer which no conscious effort brought to her lips. “From all evil and mischief—from sin—from the crafts—and assaults—of the devil—” Sometimes she thought it was the Bishop reciting the words, but she always realized in the end that she was saying them herself, and wondered—and wondered—why she said them.

Her impressions grew blurred at last. She must have dozed, for suddenly—as one returning from a long distance—she started to the sound of her name, and realized Montague once more—Montague whom she had forgotten.

With a great start she awoke to find herself in his arms. She made an instinctive effort to free herself but he held her to his breast, and she was too numbed to resist.

“I can’t stand it,” he said. “I can’t stand by and let you die. Frances, you are mine. Do you hear? You are mine. Whatever comes of it, I’m not going to let you go again!”

She heard the rising passion in his voice. It was like a goad, pricking her to action. For a few seconds she lay passive, waiting as it were for strength. All her life she was to remember the strange calm of those waiting moments. She was as one ship-wrecked and in appalling danger, yet in some fashion aware of rescue drawing near.

And then quite suddenly deliverance came; she knew not how nor stayed to question whence. She realized only the presence of a power beyond her own, uplifting her, succouring her. She put away the arms that sought to hold her, and even as she did so, there came a sound beyond the dripping of the rain—the sound of a child’s voice singing a little tuneless song to itself out in the darkness.

Frances gasped and uttered a cry. “Is that you, child? Is that you?”

The song ceased. A child’s voice made reply. “Is that the pretty lady who gives me flowers?”

They could not see her, but she was close to them. She had entered the shed and stood before them.

“I dreamt I would find you here,” she said. “It was Daniel in the lions’ den at first, then it was you. Why are you in here?”

Frances was on her feet. The man behind her never stirred.

“I have lost my way, little darling,” she said. “How did you get here in the dark?”

“I don’t know the dark,” said the child. “What is dark?”

Frances groping, touched and held a small figure standing before her. “Can you take me back, Rosebud?” she said.

A tiny hand, full of confidence, found and clasped her own. “I will take you to Tetherstones,” said the child.

They went out together, hand in hand, into the dripping darkness.