The events of that evening followed on each other so quickly that it seemed to Meg afterwards as if she had been impelled by some power outside herself, though whether of Heaven or hell she doubted later in life.

She heard the crunch of gravel under the carriage wheels, as her aunt drove away to the ball over which they had had such contention; then she dried her eyes and drew a breath of relief.

Meg always felt happier when Mrs. Russelthorpe was out of the house; and her antipathy was the more painful because she blamed herself for it. It was wicked to hate any one. Unfortunately, naming the devil doesn't always exorcise him!

One thing at least was clear to the girl,—it was impossible to go on "for the next few years" as they had been going on lately; and that lightly written sentence of Mr. Deane's stung her almost into despair.

Then she remembered that at least she had his address now, and could send the letters that Aunt Russelthorpe had refused to forward, and in which she had poured out all her difficulties, and asked his decision on them, as if he had been confessor as well as father. Meg looked upon that refusal as a piece of gratuitous and incomprehensible cruelty; but then, in spite of Laura's plain speaking, she never quite understood Mrs. Russelthorpe. She might have abjured gaieties if she had only refrained from claiming her father's sympathy and counsel in her temporary insanity; though even if she had fully recognised that fact, it is doubtful whether she would have sold her birthright. She threw it away instead, which, to some temperaments, is easier than selling.

Balls were early in those days, and it was only eight o'clock, when, with her letter in her hand, she started for the Dover post-office.

It was a long lonely walk; and an older woman than Meg might have thought twice about it, but the girl was too ignorant of evil to be afraid.

She had scruples about asking a servant of her aunt's to accompany her, but she had no doubt that she was justified in her own action.

Her father had told her to write to him,—that was reason enough, and to do anything was a relief to her.

Meg's strength and weakness both rose from the same source: she could be unhesitatingly daring for the person she loved, but if that support should fail, would slip into confusion and despair. Even now there was a leaven of bitterness working in her, a terror that was making her restless. Were Aunt Russelthorpe and Laura right? Did "father" not "care" much after all?

She turned instinctively from that suggestion, and tried to fix her mind on the topics that had lately filled it. As she took the short cut over the cliffs, and walked quickly along the footway that skirts their edge, she thought of that still narrower path which Barnabas Thorpe had pointed out as the only way of salvation.

The sky still glowed behind Dover Castle, though the sun had disappeared; there was hardly a breath of wind to stir the short crisp grass, the broad downs lay still and peaceful in the gathering dusk: Meg was the only human being to be seen, but the little brown rabbits scurried by, and peeped at her from a safe distance, making her smile in spite of her sadness. She was as easily moved to smiles as she was to sighs.

It had been a hot summer, and there were ominous cracks across the footway, which had been deserted of late. Meg, who was Kentish born, ought to have known what those fissures and gaps meant. Perhaps the rabbits would have warned her if they could; for one of them loosened a morsel of chalk as he leaped, which bounded and rebounded down the side of the cliff. She watched it idly, not considering the signification.

Earlier in the day there had been a heavy thunderstorm, which was growling still in the far distance. Meg lingered a moment, listening to the echo among the chalk caves below,—smuggling haunts, where many a keg of brandy had been hidden.

If she had not paused, her light footsteps would have carried her safely over the dangerous bit. As it was, the "crack" she had just stepped carelessly over suddenly widened to a chasm, the earth seemed to give way under her; she stretched out her arms with a wild cry, and fell,—fell, with a vision of clouds of white powder and flashing lights, stopping at last, with a sharp jarring shock, to find herself grasping desperately at something steady, just above her, in a reeling tumbling world! She lay on her side on a narrow ledge a quarter of the way down the cliff, her right shoulder and arm bruised by the fall; but she was hardly conscious of pain, her mind being set on clinging fast to the friendly poppy root that was keeping her from death.

She could hear the sea washing hungrily, with a sullen break, and a strong backward suck, many feet below; she shuddered, and then screamed with all her might, again and again, waking the echoes and the seagulls, who answered her derisively.

She was in terror lest her fingers should relax their hold, in spite of her will. She lost count of time, and began to feel as if she had lain for ages between earth and sky.

Her left arm was getting numb, and her brain dizzy; she was dreadfully afraid of losing consciousness, and tried hard to keep possession of "herself," knowing that if she fainted she would slip down at once, and the green water would roll her over and draw her back.

"Like a cat with a mouse," thought Meg. Her reflections were getting indistinct, and she gathered her strength together to scream once more. A horror of losing her identity, of being swamped in a "black nothingness," was strong on her.

"Help me!" she cried, with an effort to make the words articulate, that was followed by a vague recollection that she had asked some one to "help her" once before, but he never did or never could.

She couldn't quite remember how it was: her past life seemed to have got far away, to have dropped off her, leaving her soul all alone, face to face with this black empty space that was trying to engulf it.

"There isn't any help," she said to herself. "It's all really like the sea, or cats and mice, and my fingers don't seem to belong to me any more," and then——

"Hold on!" said a voice above her. "Don't move, I'll run for a rope."

She opened her eyes and tried to collect her wits.

"I can't hold on more than a minute more," she said a little indistinctly. "If you go I shall fall." While she spoke the root she was clinging to "gave" a little, and a light shower of chalk fell on her face.

"I'm falling! oh be quick!" she cried; and the next moment something blue dangled above her face.

"Let go those leaves, and catch hold of my jersey. I'll pull ye up by it," shouted the voice, the owner of which had flung himself full length on the cliff, his face and arms over the edge.

"Do it at once!" He called, this time as peremptorily as he could, for he was in momentary terror lest yellow poppy and girl should go together to the bottom.

To his relief she obeyed him.

"Both hands!" he cried encouragingly. "I can't pull you up by one."

"I can't move my right arm," she answered. "It's twisted somehow;" and he whistled in dismay.

Meg was as white as the chalk, but she showed some courage now that help was at hand, and she managed to pull herself into a sitting posture, holding tight to his jersey. Further than that he couldn't get her, and he did not dare to leave her lest she should turn giddy.

"I tell you what," he said at last. "There is only one way; I can't pull ye up, an' I doan't risk leaving ye on that narrow bit: ye must e'en come down to me. If I drop over the face o' the cliff there's a foothold close beside ye, now that you're sitting up, and a drop below that again, there's a broader ledge and a cave. Ye'll be safe enough there. Will 'ee try? but we must, for there's naught else to be done. Can ye let go my jersey and sit quite still one minute? Doan't 'ee look, lass, shut your eyes and put your hands down each side."

Meg nodded and held her breath. She felt him alight at her side, and then heard him shout from below.

"All right! There's room enough here," he cried. "Edge along sideways as far as ye can to the right. Don't be scared, ye won't fall! It's quite possible."

He spoke with assurance, and his confident tone gave her courage as he intended it should; but, nevertheless, his own pulses were beating rather fast, albeit his nerves were good as a rule.

Would the girl do it, or would she slip before he could catch her? She was directly over him at last. "Now," he said, "your foot almost touches my shoulder. Ay—that's it, put your weight on it and—ah! that's right. Thank God!" He held her in his arms now, and the next moment she was safe at his side.

Meg leant against the entrance of the cave, half laughing and half crying.

She was not in the least surprised to see that it was the preacher who had saved her, but the absurdity of the situation struck her with a sudden reaction.

The cave was dark, and very damp and ill-smelling; the ledge was just wide enough for them to stand quite safely on it. They were perched like two big birds on the face of the cliff, with a sheer descent that not even Barnabas could have swarmed down, below them.

"Yes, yes!" she gasped in answer to his ejaculation of thankfulness. "But—we shall never, never get up again!"

The preacher made no reply directly. Possibly the same idea had occurred to him.

She sat down in the entrance of the cave, and he tied up her bruised arm as well as he could, improvising a sling with the lace scarf she wore round her neck.

Fortunately, no bones were broken; and she assured him with a smile that he "hardly hurt her at all," though the muscles had been badly strained and her arm was still quite useless. He looked at her doubtfully, but could hardly gather from her face how much or how little she was suffering. He was not accustomed to women of Meg's class, and was sorely puzzled as to what he had best do next.

"Look here!" he said at last. "It's not possible that ye should spend the night in this wet hole; ye'd be fairly starved wi' cold, and no one's likely to come by before morning. I'll climb up somehow and run to the coastguard for help. Ye won't be scared here, eh?"

He bent down and put his jersey between her and the wall of the cave.

"It's been an Irish way of helping ye up!"

Meg looked at him. Her face was very pale, but she had quite recovered her self-command now.

"Don't go," she said. "You might so easily be killed trying to climb in the dark. It is dark. I can hardly see the sea now. It would be my fault if you were to fall, and really I don't think I am worth it."

"If I am to die it 'ull happen the same whatever I do, an' if not, I'll be as safe as if I were in my bed," said Barnabas Thorpe. "But I doan't fancy ye need be scared, for I believe neither you nor I ha' come to an end o' things yet. It has been on my mind that I'd see ye again."

He turned, and began to swarm up the cliff as he spoke; and Meg stopped her ears, for the sound of the crumbling chalk sickened her, and waited in the dark.

The preacher shouted cheerfully when he scrambled to his feet at the top; and then, without further loss of time, started off towards the coastguard station. He was barefooted, having taken off his boots in order to climb; but that troubled him little, as he ran steadily across the night-curtained sleeping country.

Some hours later they stood together in the hall at Ravenshill, Mrs. Russelthorpe facing them.

It was one o'clock; the short summer's night was nearly spent, but the big swinging lamp was still burning. To Meg and Barnabas, coming in from the sweet dark garden, the house seemed in a blaze of light.

The men were all out, searching far and wide for Meg. Only Mr. Russelthorpe had not been told of her absence: he had gone early to bed, and locked the door on himself; giving orders that no one was to disturb him.

Mrs. Russelthorpe was white with passion. Meg was quite silent.

Barnabas Thorpe stood looking from one woman to the other.

"You are a disgrace to the house! You have no shame left!" said Mrs. Russelthorpe. Then the man's blue eyes flashed angrily.

"There's only one of us three has any cause for shame, an' it's not this maid nor me. It's not fit that any should say such things to her. Have ye no brother or father, lass? If ye have, I would like to speak wi' him."

Meg shook her head.

"Yes; but he is a very long way off; and I don't quite know where," she said; "and, perhaps, he'll believe Aunt Russelthorpe."

Mrs. Russelthorpe's face hardened; the preacher could not have done worse than appeal from her to Meg's father. She was a hard woman, and rather a coarse one; but she would scarcely have said what she said that night, if the jealousy which always smouldered between her and her brother's child had not been fanned by his words.

"He will most certainly believe me," she said. "But it is almost a pity (for his sake) that, having stayed away so long, you ever came back at all."

Meg caught her breath with a low cry, as if she had been stabbed; but a sudden light broke over the preacher's face.

"Cast thy garments about thee, and follow me," he cried. "I did not understand before. My eyes were holden; but now it is made clear to us: it is the message from the Lord."

He made one stride forward and stretched out both his hands.

"Come now!" he cried. "I will snatch you like a brand from the burning. Come with me! Let us go out together and preach the Master in the Highways and Hedges. Your example shall be as a shining light to guide the feet of those who are snared by riches. Come! The world has called you on one side and the Master on the other, and you have hesitated; and now the call has been made clearer. Choose quickly, before it is too late. Let me take you from the evil that you feel too strong for you. No one can stay us. You shall go like Peter through the prison doors at the call of the Lord, an' in His strength I will hold ye safe."

Meg looked at him, one long earnest look, then away from him, at the familiar hall, where she had danced gaily three months ago. She thought of the portrait of the great-aunt whose eyes always followed her, and who had done something mysteriously "dreadful". Aunt Russelthorpe would say she was as bad, but she wasn't, she was following a call. She thought of her old uncle, who was sleeping through all this commotion; she thought of Laura and Kate; her aunt's words about her father had hurt her so much that she tried not to think of him; she saw again the preacher on the beach, ah! that was the beginning, and to-night only grew out of it; or was the beginning further back still in the days when her father had told her of Lazarus waiting "outside"?

"Choose while ye may," said Barnabas Thorpe. And she put her hand in his with an odd sense that very little "choice" was left.

"You say it is a message?" she said. "Very well. Let it be so—I will go with you."

Mrs. Russelthorpe had stood with lips compressed, rigidly still, during the preacher's extraordinary proposal; she made one faint attempt to stop them now—but it was too late.

Barnabas Thorpe put her aside as easily as he would have brushed away a fly. "You ha' said your say. It was a cruel one," he said. "You ha' done wi' this maid." And they went out together into the night.

The men who had been sent out to search for Meg returned in the early morning. Their mistress met them in the hall; she had evidently taken no rest, and her face in the pitiless daylight looked haggard and worn.

It had been known in the household that Mrs. Russelthorpe and Miss Margaret didn't get on; but the servants whispered to each other now, that Mrs. Russelthorpe took it harder than might have been expected.

Later in the day, the coastguard from the station on the downs brought news of Miss Deane, and told how Barnabas Thorpe had come to his cottage for ropes, and of how they had gone together to the young lady's assistance.

The coastguard would hardly believe that the preacher had not brought his charge safely home. "I would have trusted my own daughter with him anywhere," he kept repeating. Of that strange scene in the hall, no one but the three concerned ever knew.

Later still they heard of Meg's marriage;—the bare announcement and no more. Mrs. Russelthorpe handed the missive to her husband.

"The girl is crazy," she said. "There is no other explanation."

Mr. Russelthorpe laid down his book—they were in the library—with a groan.

"I can't face Charles. I shall go away when he comes back," was the only comment he made.

"Why? It wasn't your fault," said his wife impatiently. "You had nothing to do with the unhappy child."

"Nothing, nothing!" muttered the old man. "She told me she was desperate, and I did nothing."

Mrs. Russelthorpe turned on him sharply; her face was hard and drawn.

"Margaret told you that? Then hold your tongue about it, Joseph. It is better she should be mad, than that she should have taken this scamp of her own free will."

Mr. Russelthorpe shook his head.

"You have never liked the girl," he said. "But she is no more mad than you are. She was in our charge, and we have been bad guardians; and when your brother comes——"

"When he comes I will meet him," said Mrs. Russelthorpe; "it is between him and me."

The old man gave her a quick furtive glance.

"You have never wanted any one else to come between you and him," he said; and Mrs. Russelthorpe winced.

"We'll talk of it no more," she cried. "Meg is dead to us."

"Yes," said Uncle Russelthorpe, "but that won't prevent there being the devil to pay."

There is—or rather there was when Margaret Deane was young—a fishing hamlet on the Kentish coast that consisted of just one line of tarred wooden huts, and a square-towered chapel.

The women would put their candles in the windows after the sun had dipped, that the twinkling friendly eyes of their houses might guide the fishermen home; but whether it was day or night Sheerhaven had always the air of a watcher by the sea.

The glow of dawn was just warming the grey water when a boat grated on Sheerhaven beach, and a man and a woman climbed slowly up the yellow shelving bank. When they had gone a few steps the man turned and held out his hand. "You are over weary, an' it's no wonder," he said. "Best let me help you."

A fisherman who was pushing off his boat paused and marvelled, as well he might.

"That's Barnabas Thorpe. But who is the girl?"

They walked along the queer old street, that was bounded on one side by the shingle, and was often wave- as well as wind-swept, in the high spring-tides.

Barnabas knocked at a door. His mind was still running on St. Peter and the angel. "It 'ull be the mistress not the maid who will open to us here," he remarked.

The smell of a clover field was blown to them, and a cock crew lustily while they waited.

"The new day has begun," said the girl in a low voice.

The woman who opened the door, a muscular large-featured fish-wife, started when she saw them.

"Dear heart! it's the preacher,—and wet through," she cried. "Now step in, Barnabas, and I'll have a fire in a minute. Eh! what's this? What do you say? A maid as wants shelter?" her good-natured face fell. She had little doubt that it was some "unfortunate" the preacher had rescued.

"We—el—yes; let her come along, she'll do us no harm."

She took them into the parlour, and began to lay the sticks.

"Ran down with the tide from Dover, eh? Well, you've given the lass a salt baptism; she's not got a dry stitch on her. Come nearer, my woman; the fire will blaze up in a minute. Why!" with a sudden change of voice as Meg obeyed her. "The Lord have mercy on us, Barnabas! What have you been about?"

"I'll tell ye by-and-by when she is a bit dryer," said the preacher; but Mrs. Cuxton's eyes did not wait for his telling. She took one more long stare at her strange visitor, who had taken off the rough coat Barnabas had wrapped round her in the boat, and who stood shivering a little by the fire.

Her glance fell from the delicate refined face to the small nervous hands, and the dainty shoes soaked in salt water.

"You belong to gentlefolk, missy?" she said. "Ah, yes! I can see——"

"I don't belong to them any more," said the girl, speaking for the first time with a thrill of excitement, but with an intonation and accent which belied her words; and their hostess shook her head, and looked again at Barnabas, who was staring thoughtfully at the flames.

"I'd as lief speak a word to 'ee," he said gravely; and she followed him out of the room with the liveliest interest depicted on her face.

When she returned alone she found her guest sleeping from sheer exhaustion, her head on the seat of the wooden chair, her slim girlish form on the sanded floor.

Mrs. Cuxton bent over her, her gratified curiosity giving place to a protective motherly compunction; Meg's fair hair was wet with the sea, and shone in the firelight like a halo, her lips were just parted, she looked less than her twenty-one years.

"Poor lamb! to think what I thought of her! Eh! but it's a bad enough business as it is!" muttered the woman; and even while she watched her heart went out to the girl.

Meg awake might possibly have aroused criticism or disapproval; Meg sleeping took her unawares.

Mrs. Cuxton made up a bed on the settle, and drew it to the fire and then took off the wet shoes and stockings, warming the cold feet between her hands. Meg woke up and remonstrated faintly, but was too utterly worn out to care much what happened. The reaction from the tremendous excitement of the night was telling on her, and she was almost too weary to stand, though she felt a sort of comfort in this rough woman's tenderness.

"How kind you are, and what a deal of trouble I am giving you!" she said, as Mrs. Cuxton made her lie down in the improvised bed, and tucked her in with a motherly admonition to "put sleep betwixt her and her sorrows".

"I can't think whatever your people were about to let you do such a thing, and you only a slip of a girl. Trouble? you're no trouble in the world, missy; but your mother must be breaking her heart to-night for you!" cried Mrs. Cuxton; and there were actually tears in her eyes.

"I haven't got a mother," said Meg. "Nobody's heart will break for me, so it really doesn't much matter, you know, what happens, and I am too tired to think; besides, it's done now!" Her eyelids closed again, almost while she was speaking; and Mrs. Cuxton left her with a muttered ejaculation, worn out with weariness and excitement, sleeping like a child over the very threshold of the new life.

It was in Sheerhaven that Meg was married to Barnabas Thorpe. She took that last irrevocable step with a curious unflinching determination,—a sense, half womanly, half childish, that having gone so far, there had better be no going back; that having trusted him so much, the responsibility was his altogether.

"I can't do any other way," he had told her. "I couldn't take ye with me without that; ye must have the protection o' my name, and give me that much right i' the eyes o' the world to fend for ye,—that's all I am wanting. I ha' never thought to marry since I was 'called'."

The girl, standing in the door of the black hut where he had brought her the night before, was quite silent for a full minute, her face full of conflicting emotions.

"If you say we must do it, then—very well," she said at last. "I may as well be Margaret Thorpe as Margaret Deane."

The preacher turned quickly; her quiet assent discomposed him, though in his heart he believed his own words: for the sake of the maid's good name there was no other way.

"Lass!" he said earnestly, "it seemed to me a call o' the Lord's, an' I had no doubts; but ye are young, an' I'm no natural mate for ye. If ye choose, I'll find that father ye talk of, wherever he may be, an' make him understan' the truth. I'll leave ye here this hour and go; but, having come out o' the city o' destruction, to my mind ye had better stay out."

"You will find my father?" Her face brightened and flushed for a second, and then rather a painful look crossed it, and she shook her head.

"Aunt Russelthorpe will see him first," she said; "so it is of no use."

No stranger could ever understand how much despair there was in that last sentence.

"Then there's just naught else possible," said the man: and she bent her head in assent.

She did not see him again till she saw him in the church, where they exchanged vows. Mrs. Cuxton gave her away with grim disapproval.

The guest whom the sea had brought in the early dawn, and who had spent two whole days under her roof, had charmed the heart out of the woman like a white witch.

Meg's fineness and slenderness touched the big fish-wife. Meg's sweet smile, the manner that was her father's, and her pretty voice, when she sat singing the whole of one morning to the little cripple lad whose life Barnabas Thorpe had once saved, were all part of the witchery. During the whole of her chequered life there were always some people (and generally people of a very opposite type to her own) who were inclined to give her that peculiarly warm and instinctive service that has something of the romance of loyalty in it; her home had been somewhat over-cold, but more than once the gift of love, unexpected and unasked, was held out by strange hands as she passed by.

It was a gusty morning, and the break of the waves sounded all through the short service when Meg was married. She paused when they stood on the steps of the church and looked across the sea,—a long look—(somewhere on the other side of that water was her father); then they went inside.

The bride had on a close-fitting plain straw bonnet that Mrs. Cuxton had bought in the village, and her white dress was simpler than what might have been worn by a woman of the preacher's own class; but the old clergyman who was to tie the knot (blind and sleepy though he was) peered hard at her, then looked at Barnabas Thorpe uncertainly. They were a strangely matched couple, he thought. If Meg had seemed frightened he would possibly have spoken; but when her courage was at the sticking-point she did not hesitate, and nothing would have induced her to show the white feather then. It was a plainly furnished church, small and light. The walls were whitewashed, the communion table was covered with a much-patched cloth. It was so small that the fishermen seemed almost to fill it.

They were a deeply interested congregation. All of them knew the preacher; many of them were bound to him by close ties.

Meg's fresh sweet voice, with its refined pronunciation, troubled the clergyman afresh; but it was too late to ask questions, and the service went on undisturbed to its conclusion.

The two signatures are still visible in the vestry. "Margaret Deane," in the fine Italian hand that Mrs. Russelthorpe had inculcated; and underneath, in laboured characters like a schoolboy's, "Barnabas Thorpe".

Meg's pride carried her safely through the meal that waited them on their return; it was spread in the kitchen, and some of the fishermen who had been in the church lounged in, and stared silently at her through the sheltering clouds of tobacco. She made a valiant attempt to eat, and then escaped to change her dress, for the blue serge skirt and cotton body, that Mrs. Cuxton had got with the slender stock of money Meg had had in her pocket.

Mrs. Cuxton followed her after a minute.

"Barnabas is writing them word at home that he has married you. He says have you aught to say?" she said.

"No," answered the girl; "there will never be anything more said between them and me."

Mrs. Cuxton nodded: her manner had changed slightly since the deed had been done, and the last gleam of doubt as to Meg's "really going on with it" had disappeared.

"I don't know what led you to this," she said, putting her hand on Meg's shoulder; "but you say true—you've done it! And whether the blame was mostly yours or not, it's you that must take the consequences! But you've a bit of a spirit of your own, that I fancy may carry you through; and Barnabas Thorpe is a good man, for all I blame him for this day's work. You just stick by him now, and don't never look back at what you've left—it's your only way!"

Meg made no answer: an odd frightened expression crossed her face; then she drew herself up. "I am ready," she said; "only just say 'Good Luck' to me before I go."

"God help you and bless you," said Mrs. Cuxton earnestly, "and him too!"

There was a hush when the bride came in, as unlike a fish-wife in her fish-wife's gear, as well could be.

Barnabas Thorpe sprang to his feet and cut leave-takings short. A cart was waiting for them; he threw up a bundle and lifted Meg in, before she knew what he was about, and they were off at a rather reckless pace down the uneven street.

Meg leant back to wave her hand to Mrs. Cuxton; she had not said good-bye, or thanked her, but she watched her till they were out of sight. It seemed to the good woman that those grey eyes were saying a good deal that Meg's tongue had not said; and as the cart dwindled to a speck in the distance she turned indoors with a heavy heart.