She walked on slowly with head erect, pausing occasionally to look round for the captain.  Edward Tredgold looked too, and a feeling of annoyance at the childish stratagems of his well-meaning friend began to possess him.

“We had better hurry a little, I think,” he said, glancing at the sky.  “The sooner we get to Dutton Priors the better.”

“Why?” inquired his companion.

“Rain,” said the other, briefly.

“It won’t rain before evening,” said Miss Drewitt, confidently; “uncle said so.”

“Perhaps we had better walk faster, though,” urged Mr. Tredgold.

Miss Drewitt slackened her pace deliberately.  “There is no fear of its raining,” she declared.  “And uncle will not catch us up if we walk fast.”

A sudden glimpse into the immediate future was vouchsafed to Mr. Tredgold; for a fraction of a second the veil was lifted.  “Don’t blame me if you get wet through,” he said, with some anxiety.

They walked on at a pace which gave the captain every opportunity of overtaking them.  The feat would not have been beyond the powers of an athletic tortoise, but the most careful scrutiny failed to reveal any signs of him.

“I’m afraid that he is not well,” said Miss Drewitt, after a long, searching glance along the way they had come.  “Perhaps we had better go back.  It does begin to look rather dark.”

“Just as you please,” said Edward Tredgold, with unwonted caution;” but the nearest shelter is Dutton Priors.”

He pointed to a lurid, ragged cloud right ahead of them.  As if in response, a low, growling rumble sounded overhead.

“Was—­was that thunder?” said Miss Drewitt, drawing a little nearer to him.

“Sounded something like it,” was the reply.

A flash of lightning and a crashing peal that rent the skies put the matter beyond a doubt.  Miss Drewitt, turning very pale, began to walk at a rapid pace in the direction of the village.

The other looked round in search of some nearer shelter.  Already the pattering of heavy drops sounded in the lane, and before they had gone a dozen paces the rain came down in torrents.  Two or three fields away a small shed offered the only shelter.  Mr. Tredgold, taking his companion by the arm, started to run towards it.

Before they had gone a hundred yards they were wet through, but Miss Drewitt, holding her skirts in one hand and shivering at every flash, ran until they brought up at a tall gate, ornamented with barbed wire, behind which stood the shed.

The gate was locked, and the wire had been put on by a farmer who combined with great ingenuity a fervent hatred of his fellow-men.  To Miss Drewitt it seemed insurmountable, but, aided by Mr. Tredgold and a peal of thunder which came to his assistance at a critical moment, she managed to clamber over and reach the shed.  Mr. Tredgold followed at his leisure with a strip of braid torn from the bottom of her dress.