Just as Greta and the preacher, in Miller Rotherson's parlour, were struggling out of their dream—just as the woman was beginning to wonder how it would fare with Gabriel if Lomax were really dead, while the man was framing a resolve that touched the present—there came a rattle, and a whirr, and a grinding of iron against iron from outside the house. The rattle settled into a steady, rhythmic boom. Gabriel thought of Invisible Powers, but Greta could have cried tears of joy because of the relief afforded by the interruption.

"The mill-wheel has broken loose; we must go and see to it," she said.

It was a queer old building. The mill was separated from the house by a strip of kitchen garden, but a rickety wooden bridge crossed from the upper floor of the mill to the miller's bedroom; the bridge dated back to a time when most of the house itself was used as a granary, and old Rotherson still crossed by it whenever the fancy took him. Greta led the way upstairs to-night; sound sleeper as Nancy was, her mistress did not care to risk unbarring the heavy kitchen door; she and Gabriel wanted no third person to intrude just now.

Across the swaying bridge they went, the preacher silent, Greta chattering glibly, with hysterical eagerness to hoodwink her knowledge of calamity. Gabriel's eyes were devouring her greedily, hopelessly; the shadow of a parting stood between them and that short-lived happiness of a moment ago.

"The sluice-gates must have given way," said Greta. "Father said, not long since, they were getting too old to see much more service, but he thought they would last a little longer."

"The beck was in flood as I came up the Dene to-night." The preacher's voice had a far-away note in it, as if his words had no bearing on the matter in hand.

"Yes, that must be it. Do you know anything about the machinery, Gabriel? We can't stop the wheel. What will happen if we let it turn the whole night through?"

They were standing close to a pair of mill-stones. Gabriel, still regardless of aught beyond the bitter expiation that lay before him, let his eyes wander to the "shoe" which fed the stones.

"Know about the machinery?" he repeated vaguely. "Yes, I know the ins and outs. Your father explained it all to me one afternoon."

He no longer dared to look at Greta, but kept his eyes upon the grain, as the hopper doled it out to the shoe, and the shoe to the running-stone. The supply of grain stopped; a curious grating noise sounded from below, as the upper stone found no better work to do than to grind at its neighbour's face.

Suddenly Gabriel recalled what the miller had told him about the danger of leaving the stones unsupplied with grist. Like a flash he was down the ladder and across the littered floor to where the driving-belt was going its merry round. He took a stick that was lying close to his hand, and pushed the belt from one of the supporting pulleys; the belt hung limp, and the mill-wheel might turn as it would now for all Gabriel cared. The sweat was running off his face as he came back to Greta's side.

"What is the matter? What have you been doing?" she asked, at a loss to account for this fresh perturbation of his.

"Switching off the belt. Lass, if we had let those stones grind much longer, they would have blown the place up."

"Blown the mill up? But how?"

"They'd have grown hot enough to set fire to the dust between them—and that would have meant death to all in the house, Greta."

Greta, troubled with the glimmerings of a new hope, rested her forehead against the cool stonework of the window. The idea took shape at last; she turned to the preacher with a motherly, protecting air.

"Gabriel, suppose you have kil—suppose some one did fall over the quarry-edge—haven't you saved two lives to-night? If you had not come, I should never have known the danger, and—Gabriel, isn't it worth something to have saved my life?"

For a moment the preacher clutched at this specious solace. He had paid two human lives for the one he had taken—would not the Almighty think that a fair exchange? But he lost the hope.

"There's no expiation, save one. Come away, Greta, and get to bed," he said doggedly.

As they re-crossed the bridge, Gabriel glanced instinctively towards the swirling water on their left. What gleams of light were abroad caught the tips of the wavelets, the slimy paddles of the wheel. He shivered as he watched; his mind flew back to that other stretch of water, where his friend was lying. The din and hurry of the mill-wheel seemed cheery by contrast with the silence of the quarry.

They passed through the door that opened into the miller's room. Greta set down her candle on the washing-stand.

"You want to get rid of me. What are you going to do, Gabriel?"

"Never mind, lass, never mind."

She took fright at his wildness of look; she feared he would do himself an injury if left alone. Forgetful of all else, she just held open her arms, and—

"Gabriel," she said softly, "stay with me. I can't bear to let you go."

Her cheeks grew red with shame when she had got half way through with the words; but what did anything—anything—matter, so only she could keep Gabriel from harm? So long she had waited for him; was she to lose him in the first flush of possession?

Whatever there was of passion in the preacher—and he was full of it, to the finger-tips—leaped to the front. He trembled from head to foot; those soft arms seemed to draw him beyond all resistance. With a cry he stepped towards her—then stopped. The habit of a lifetime, in this supreme moment, was not minded to stand idly by, taking no part in the struggle; were his sins against God so slight that he dared add one more to their number? He moaned in the agony of repression. And down the girl's crimsoned cheeks ran tears of helplessness. The candle went out and left them in darkness.

"Greta," said the preacher at last, "his wife will be waiting up for him." The quiet voice, the commonplace words, sounded odd after the stress that had preceded them.

"Whose wife?" she whispered, not daring to acknowledge the certain answer.

"Griff's. My way lies plain, lass; I must go and tell her." He went out to the stair-head; Greta followed him into the lamplight.

"You shan't—you shan't! No one need know. No one saw you. Perhaps he isn't dead, after all, Gabriel? You fell and lost your senses, you say. It may have been all a dream—a kind of nightmare—and you said there was no body to be seen. We will wait, and if"—she crept close and looked at him with horror-stricken eyes—"if an accident did happen, we must go away together, you and I—I shan't mind it a bit, dear; we will begin in a new country, and——" She had forgotten her father in the first wild panic for Gabriel's safety.

"No, Greta. My way lies clear, and you can't turn me. First to tell his wife, and then to give myself up—it's as plain as can be."

"And what of me?" cried the girl. "Don't you understand that there are two to reckon for now? For your own peace of mind you must go—but what of mine?"

The tears rose in the preacher's eyes.

"Lass, don't make it too hard to bear. I am not fit to claim you, and you'll be well rid of a scoundrel. Let me go, and have done with it."

She put her arms round his neck, but he forced them away and went down the stairs. Without one backward look he left the house and struck up towards the moor; it was the hardest effort—save one—that he had made in all his life of conflict. He did not hear the footsteps that sounded behind him all the way up from the mill.

As he gained the moor he started to feel a hand laid in his. Greta was nestling to his side.

"Go back, go back, I tell you!" he cried.

"Never, Gabriel. You thought it was a light thing to win a woman's heart? You thought I should stay safe indoors, while you went across the moor—in the darkness? If you must go to his wife, I go with you, and tell her the things you leave out of your story."

He turned, desperately. It seemed that his every instinct towards the right was being frustrated.

"Greta, haven't I enough to bear? Your shoulders are over young, lass, to take their share. Go back; and put me out of mind."

For answer she took his hand and led him towards Gorsthwaite. He gave up the contest, suffering himself to be led. Together, in an awful quiet, they crossed the nodding sweep of heather. Late as it was, a light shone out from the old Hall.

"She is waiting up; I knew how it would be," whispered the preacher. "Can you see her there, Greta, listening to the wind—starting up at each fresh sound—thinking her husband's come home at last? Can you see her face when she opens the door for us? Can you see her drop on the floor, as I blurt out the truth, never stopping to break it gently, for fear of going mad if I didn't get it over at once?"

"Hush, dear, hush!" pleaded Greta.

He was quiet for a space; then, "Vengeance is Thine, O Lord!" he cried. "Vengeance is Thine; only make me less of a coward for this one short while!"

The back-thrust from his sense of failing purpose made him beat noisily on the door with his fists. From within they heard a man's shout—

"He's here! I knew he'd come."

The preacher leaned heavily against the door-post. It was Griff's voice—Griff's, who was lying at the bottom of Whins Quarry. But Greta was quicker to hope than he, and she guessed the truth.

"You are later than I expected; come in, old fellow," said the figure on the doorstep. "What! you're not alone! Miss Rotherson, is that you?"

She came and rested both hands on his shoulders, out of sheer gratitude to him for being alive.

"I have brought Gabriel to tell you"—she stopped, and laughed like a child—"to tell you we can't live without one another."

The preacher moved forward, groping his way till he found Lomax. He ran his hands over him, this way and that, like a blind man.

"Griff, is it true; is it true, lad?"

Griff caught him by the hands and wrung them till the preacher's arms were like to start from their sockets.

"Do I feel like a dead man?" he laughed. Then he pulled them both indoors. A couple of tumblers and a spirit-case stood on the table. "Do you see those, Gabriel?" he asked, pointing to the glasses. "I was so sure of your coming that I made ready for you. Don't look so scared, man! Put down this brandy, and you'll see things a bit more squarely."

The brandy did wonders for Gabriel; it gave him nerve, and discounted the supernatural. Griff showed plainly enough now as a being of flesh and blood.

"Tell me about it," he said at last.

"There is little to tell. A touch of fight wasn't amiss, but we were fools to stand at the edge of the quarry. You got me over your head—the devil knows how you did it—and the next thing was that I found myself stuck in the middle of a thorn-bush growing out of the rock-side. My face will show you that I had a pretty warm reception. When I got the hang of things again, and began to wonder how I was to climb out of the mess, I remembered that hospitable thorn-bush well; I used to come bird's-nesting there when I was a boy, and I reached it by a broadish ledge of rock that jutted out from side to side of the quarry just below the bush. I let the dizziness get clear, and a crawl of a few yards brought me safe across. That's the whole story."

"But I heard you splash into the water," said Gabriel.

"That you didn't! I'll warrant that, and I ought to know. What you heard, I fancy, was a big stone that came tumbling down from above while I was stuck in the bush; it missed my head by about six inches."

"Then I nearly killed you twice," murmured the preacher. "I remember loosening a piece of the wall when I fell back against it. Griff, lad, I have done you a fearful wrong."

"Fudge; drop that sickly over-sentimentality of yours. Misses don't count in the rough-and-tumble of life, and anyhow it was a sheer mischance.—So you've arranged matters, you two, at last? Well, it was about time. Gabriel is so dull-witted, Miss Rotherson, where his happiness is concerned."

Greta wondered that he could stoop to light banter at such a time. But she looked at him more closely, and she read in his face what the effort meant to him. Yet Griff was smiling a moment later with genuine merriment; he was thinking that it was a more awkward scene for Gabriel than if he had really been dead, instead of very much alive.

"Does your wife know?" asked Gabriel, suddenly.

"Of course not. No one knows but we three. I told Kate I had slipped over the quarry accidentally—so I had, in a way. I said you might be coming in to-night to talk over your worries, because I guessed you would rush off here to blurt out what had happened. I know you to a hair's-breadth, Gabriel, you see. Make your mind easy on that score, old chap."

"I shall tell her," said the preacher, quietly.

"Tell her? You'll do nothing of the kind! Nay, Gabriel, there is a limit. Once let you do this, and the next thing you will be standing on the churchyard steps to admit all Marshcotes to the secret."

"Your wife must know," persisted Gabriel.

Greta stole a look at him; and dearly she loved that rugged light of determination in his face—the face that had once seemed plain to her.

So absorbed were they in their own affairs that they had not noted the figure standing in the doorway. It was Kate, her hair tumbled about her nightgown, her bare feet heedless of the cold oak on which they were resting.

"Gabriel Hirst," she said, "was it you who sent him over the quarry-edge?"

The preacher tried to look her in the face, and failed; tried to speak, but his throat was dry. Kate repeated her question, in the same deep, relentless tone.

"It was," whispered Gabriel, hoarsely.

"Then God forgive you, for it's little forgiveness you'll ever get from me."

Griff, for the first time since he had known her, was furious with his wife.

"Kate, for shame—for shame!" he thundered.

But across the room she sent him such a look of tenderness—of idolatry, almost—that his anger died within him, and the shame returned on himself.

The preacher stood with head downcast; he had not come here to plead against a fair judgment, he had come to bear his punishment. A hush settled over the two men, and over the women who loved them.

Then it was borne in on Greta that the man of her choice was being cruelly ill-used. An anger, fierce as Kate's own, gave her words with which to meet the crisis.

"Have you never loved your husband, Kate Lomax?" she cried. "Have you never felt what it would mean if some other woman came between you—some woman who pretended to be your friend, and played you false behind your back? Would you want to kill her, or is this talk of your moor-bred women so much idle chatter?"

Kate looked at her husband again. That graphic touch of rivalry brought a grim smile to her lips.

"I think I should kill her," she said quietly.

"Yet you rail at Gabriel, just because he made the like jealousy a cause for fighting. You have not heard the whole tale yet. Your husband met me by chance this morning in the Dene; Gabriel saw us laughing and talking together, and jumped to a stupid conclusion."

"Is that all your defence?" said Kate, with a curl of the lip. "Was that his excuse for—what he did?"

"It was enough. He was blind, because he loved me and feared everything; he was strong, because he thought he had right on his side. And now, since he showed himself the better man, he crawls in the dust before you. I would not have done; I am proud that he fought so well for me."

Kate had ever been too quick in passion to dwell long with resentment. Her nature was generous, too, and no doubt of her husband's share in the adventure stepped in to mar her generosity. She admired this quiet girl for the way in which she had suddenly blazed forth in defence of the man she loved. She had a struggle with her pride, and then proved it by submission. She came across to Greta and took her by both hands.

"I will forgive him," she said, in her grave way, "because a good woman has pleaded well for him."

Not till Greta had given way and sobbed out furtive little apologies in Kate's arms did it occur to the older woman that her costume left certain details wanting. From the moment when she had first heard the voices outside her window, until the last clearing storm, she had thought of nothing but the new light that was thrown on Griff's recent danger. But now she looked down at her ten pink toes, and flushed dismayedly.

"Come upstairs with me," she said to the girl, and fled.

"Well, old fellow, I hope this is the last word about an unlucky job," said Griff, venturing at last to break the silence.

"Nay, not the last," answered the preacher, gravely. "There is expiation, lad, ahead of me."