Having already learned from experience that hard work quickens the flight of time, Joan, returning in happy mood to her home and with no trace of the past tears upon her cheeks, surprised Mrs. Tregenza by a display of most unusual energy and activity. She helped the butcher to get the pig into a low cart built expressly for the conveyance of such unwieldy animals; she looked mournfully at her departing companion, knowing that the morrow had nothing for him but a knife, that he had eaten his last meal. And while Joan listened to the farewell grunts of the fattest pig which had ever adorned her father's sty, Mrs. Tregenza counted the money and bit a piece here and there, and wondered if she could get the next young pig from Uncle Chirgwin for even a lower figure than the last.

The day which had wrought such wonders for Joan's inner life, and brought to her eyes a sort of tears unshed till then, ended at last, and for her a sleepless night followed upon it. Not until long past one o'clock in the morning did she lose consciousness, and then the thoughts of the day broke loose again in visions, taking upon themselves fantastic shapes and moving amid dream scenery of strange splendor. Now it was her turn to conjure brain pictures out of fevered thoughts, and she woke at last with a start in the dawn, to see a faint light painting the square of her bedroom window. Looking out, she found the world dimly visible, a darker shadow through the gloom where the fishing-boats were gathering in the bay, the lighthouse lamp still shining, stars twinkling overhead, absolute silence everywhere, and a cold bite about the air. The girl went back to bed again, but slept no more and anon arose, dressed, set about morning duties, and, much to Mrs. Tregenza's astonishment, had the fire burning and breakfast ready by the time her stepmother appeared.

"Aw jimmery!" Thomasin exclaimed, as Joan came in from the outhouse to find her warming cold hands at the fire, "I couldn't b'lieve my eyes at first an' thot the piskey men had come to do us a turn spite o' what faither sez. You've turned over a leaf seemin'ly. Workin' out o' core be a new game for you."

"I couldn' sleep for thinkin' 'bout—'bout the pig an' wan thing an' 'nother."

"He's pork now, or nearly. You heard butcher promise me some nattlins, dedn' 'e? You'd best walk up to Paul bimebye an' fetch, 'em. 'Tis easier to call to mind other folk's promises than our awn. He said the same last pig-killin' an' it comed to nort."

Joan escaped soon after breakfast and set off eagerly enough. She took a basket with her and designed to call at Paul on the way home again. Moreover, she chose a longer route to Gorse Point than that through Mousehole, for her very regular habits of late had caused some comment in that village, and more than one acquaintance had asked her, half in jest, half in earnest, who it was she went to see up Mousehole hill. This had frightened Joan twice already, and to-day, for the first time, she took the longer route above Paul Church-town. It brought her over fields near the cow-byre where Barren spent much of his time and kept his picture; and when she saw her footpath must pass the door of the little house, a flutter quickened her pulses and she branched away over the field and proceeded to the cliffs through a gap in the hedge some distance from the byre.

But as Joan came out upon the sward through the furzes her heart sank in sight of loneliness. She was not early to-day, but she had come earlier than "Mister Jan." The gray figure was invisible. There were the marks on the turf where his easel and camp-stool stood; there was the spot his feet were wont to press, and her own standing-point against the glimmering gorse; but that was all. She knew of no reason for his delay. The weather was splendid, the day was warm, and he had never been so late before within her recollection. Joan, much wondering, sat down to wait with her eyes upon the sea, her ears alert for the first footstep, and her mind listening also. Time passed, and indefinite uneasiness grew into a fear; then that expanded and multiplied as her mind approached the problem of "Mister Jan's" non-appearance from a dozen different standpoints. Hope declared some private concern had kept him and he would not be long in coming; fear inquired what unforeseen incident was likely to have risen since yesterday—asked the question and answered it a dozen ways. The girl waited, walked here and there, scanned the footpath and the road, returned, sat down in patience, ate a cake she had brought, and so whiled the long minutes away. The fears grew as hour and half-hour passed—fears for him, not herself. The crowning despair did not touch her mind till later, and her first sorrow was a simple terror that harm had fallen upon the man. He had told her that he valued life but little, that at best no great length of days awaited him; and now she thought that wandering about the cliffs by night he might have met the death he did not fear. Then she remembered he was but a sick man always, with frail breathing parts; and her thoughts turned to the shed, and she pictured him lying ill there, unable to communicate with friends, perhaps waiting and praying long hours for her footfall as she had been waiting and praying for his. Upon this most plausible possibility striking Joan, her heart beat at her breast and her cheeks grew white. She rose from her seat upon the cliff, turned her face to the cow-byre and made a few quick steps in that direction. Then a vague flutter of sense, as of warning where no danger is visible, slowed her speed for a moment; but her heart was strung to action, and the strange new voice did not sound like Nature's, so she put it aside and let it drown into silence before the clamor of fear for "Mister Jan's" well-being. Indeed, that dim premonitory whisper excited a moment's anger in the girl that any distrust could shadow her love for such a one at such a time. She hated herself, held the thought a sin of her own commission, and sped onward until she stood upon the northern side of the byre in a shadow cast from it by the sun. The place was padlocked, and at that sight Joan's spirits, though they rose in one direction, yet fell in another. One fear vanished, a second loomed the larger; for the padlock, while it indicated that the artist had left his lonely habitation for the time, did not explain his absence now or dispel the possibilities of an accident or disaster. The tar-pitched double door of the shed was fast and offered no peep-hole; but Joan went round to the south side, where an aperture appeared and where a little glass window had taken the place of the wooden shutters. Sunshine lighted the shed inside; she could see every detail of the chamber, and she photographed it on her mind with a quick glance. A big easel with the life-size picture of herself upon it stood in the middle of the shed, and a smaller easel appeared hard by. The artist's palettes, brushes and colors littered a bench, and bottles and tumblers were scattered among them. Two pipes which she had seen in his mouth lay together upon a box on the floor, and beside them stood a tin of tobacco wrapped in yellow paper. A white umbrella and some sticks stood in one corner, and another she saw was filled by some railway rugs spread over dried bracken. Two coats hung on nails in the wall, and above one was suspended a Panama hat which Barren often wore when painting. Something moved suddenly, and, looking upon the stone floor, she saw a rat-trap with a live rat in it. The beast was running as far as it could this way and that, poking its nose up and trying the roof of its prison. She noticed its snout was raw from thrusting between the wire, and she wished she could get in to kill it. She did not know that it was a mother rat with young ones outside squeaking faintly in the stack of mangel-wurzels; she did not know, as it hopped round and round, that its beady eyes were glittering with a great agony, and that the Mother of all was powerless to break down a mere wire or two and save it.

Presently, worn and weary, Joan trudged home again, with no very happy mind. She found food for comfort in one reflection alone: the artist had made no special appointment for that day, and it might be that business or an engagement at Newlyn, Penzance or elsewhere was occupying his time. She felt it must be so, and tried hard to convince herself that he would surely be at the usual spot upon the morrow.

So she walked home unhappy; and time, which had dragged yesterday, to-day stood still. Before night she had lived an age; the hours of darkness were endless, but her father's return furnished excuse for another morning of early rising; and when Gray Michael and Tom had eaten, donned clean raiment and returned to the sea, Joan, having seen them to the pierhead, did not go home, but hastened straight away for Gorse Point, and arrived there earlier than ever she had done before. There was something soothing to her troubled mind in being upon the spot sacred to him. Though he was not present, she seemed closer far to him on Gorse Point than anywhere else. His foot had marked the turf there; his eye had mirrored the furzes a hundred times; she knew just where his shadow had fallen as he stood painting, and the spot upon which he was wont to sit by the cliff-edge when came the time for rest. Beside this holy place she now seated herself and waited with hope higher in the splendor of morning; for sorrows, fears and ills are always blackest when the sun has set, and every man or woman can better face trouble on opening their eyes in a sunny dawn than after midnight has struck, a sad day left them weakened, and nothing wakes in the world but Care and themselves.

The morning wore away, and the old fears returned with greater force to chill her soul. The sun was burnishing the sea, and she watched Mousehole luggers putting out and dancing away through the gold. Under the cliffs the gulls wheeled with sad cries and the long-necked cormorants hastened backward and forward, now flying fast and low over the water, now fishing here and there in couples. She saw them rear in the water as they dived, then go down head first, leaving a rippling circle which widened out and vanished long before the fishers bobbed up again twenty yards further on. Time after time she watched them, speculating vaguely after each disappearance as to how long the bird would remain out of sight. Then she turned her face to the land, weary of waiting, weary of the bright sea and sky, and the music of the gulls, and of life. She sat down again presently, and put her hand over her face and struggled with her thoughts. Manifold fears compassed her mind about, but one, not felt till then, rose now, a giant above the rest. Yesterday she had been all alarm for "Mister Jan"; to-day there came terror for herself. Something said "He has gone, he has left you." Her brain, without any warning, framed the words and spoke them to her. It was as though a stranger had brought the news, and she rose up white and stricken at this fatal explanation of the artist's continued absence. She put the thought from her as she had put another, but it returned with pertinacity, and each time larger than before, until the fear filled all her mind and made her wild and desperate, under the conviction of a sudden, awful life-quake launched against her existence to shatter all her new joy and dash the brimming cup of love from her lips.

Hours passed, and she grew somewhat faint and hollow every way—in head and heart and stomach. Her eyes ached, her brains were worn out with thinking; she felt old, and her body was heavy and energy dead. The world changed, too. The gorse looked strange as the sun went round, the lark sang no more, the wind blew coldly, and the sea's gold was darkened by a rack of flying clouds whose shadows fell purple and gray upon the waters. He had gone; he had left her; perhaps she would never see him or hear of him again. Then the place grew hateful to her and terrible as a grave. She dragged herself away, dizzy, weary, wretched; and not until half way home again did she find power to steady her mind and control thought. Then the old alarm returned—that first fear which had pictured him dead, perhaps even now rolling over and over under the precipices, or hid forever in the cranny of some dark cavern at the root of the cliffs, where high tides spouted and thundered and battered the flesh off his bones against granite. She suffered terribly in mind upon that homeward journey. Her own light and darkness mattered nothing now, and her personal and selfish fears had vanished before she reached Newlyn. She was thinking how she should raise an alarm, how she should tell his friends, who possibly imagined "Mister Jan" safe and comfortable in his cow-byre. But who were his friends and how should she approach them without such a step becoming known and getting talked about? Her misery was stamped on her face when she at last returned to the white cottage at three o'clock in the afternoon of that day, and Mrs. Tregenza saw it there.

"God save us! wheer you bin to, an' what you bin 'bout? You'm so pasty an' round-eyed as if you'd bin piskey-led somewheers. An' me worn to death wi' work. An' wheer'm the nattlins an' the basket?"

Joan had quite forgotten her commission and left the basket on Gorse Point.

"I'll gaw back bimebye," she said. "I bin walkin' 'long the cliffs in the sun an' forgot the time. Gimme somethin' t'ate, mother; I be hungry an' fainty like wi' gwaine tu far. I could hardly fetch home."

"You'm a queer twoad," said Thomasin, "an' I doan't knaw what's come over 'e of late days. 'Pears to me you'm hidin' summat; an' if I thot that, I'd mighty quick get faither to find out what 'twas, I can tell 'e."

Then she went off, and brought some cold potatoes and dripping, with bread and salt, and a cup of milk.