“I thought you were never coming.”

It was one of the reproaches that have no sting.

“I came at the first moment.  I left a score of things undone.”

“Have you been thinking of me?”

“Always—­always.  And you?”

“Nearly always,” she said teasingly.  “But I have been making up my accounts.”

“Avaricious woman!—­thinking of nothing but money.  Dear—­I have several bits of news for you.  But let me wash!” He held out his hands—­“I am not fit to touch you!”

She disengaged herself quietly.

“What news?”

“Some letters first,” he said, smiling.  “A budget and a half—­mostly for you, from all my home people.  Can you face it?”

“In reply to your cable?”

“My most extravagant cable!  On the top of course of sacks of letters!”

“Before we were engaged?”

He laughed as he thrust his arms into his tunic.

“My mother seems to have guessed from my very first mention of you.”

“But—­she doesn’t know yet?” said Rachel, slowly.

They had passed out of the range of the lantern.  He could not see her face, could only just hear her voice.

“No, not yet, dear.  My last long letter should reach her next week.”

Her hand lay close in his as they groped their way to the door.  When he unlatched it they came out into the light of a stormy sunset.  The rain had momentarily ceased, and there were fiery lines of crimson burning their way through the black cloud masses in the western sky.  The red light caught Rachel’s face and hair.  But even so, it seemed to him that she was pale.

“I say—­you’ve done too much threshing!” he said with energy.  “Don’t do any more—­get an extra man.”

“Can’t find one,” she said, laughing at him, but rather languidly.  “I’ll go and get the tea ready.”

He went off to wash, and when he entered the sitting-room a little later, she too was fresh and neat again, in a new frock of some soft bluish-green stuff, which pleased his eye amazingly.  Outside, the sunset was dying rapidly, and at a sign from her, he drew down the blinds over the two windows, and pulled the curtains close.  He stood at the window looking at the hill-side for a moment with the blind in his hand.  He was recalling the face he had seen, of which neither he nor any one else had yet said a word to Rachel; recalling also his talk with one of the Millsborough police the day before.  “Nothing more heard of him, Captain.  Oh, we get queer people about these hills sometimes.  It’s a very lonely bit of country.  Why, a year ago, we were hunting a couple of German prisoners about these commons for days!”

“Any more ghosts?” he said lightly, glancing round at Rachel, as he drew the curtains across.

“Not that I know of.  Come and have your tea.”

He took a cup from her hand, and leaning against the chimney surveyed the room with a radiant face.  Then he stooped over her and said:—­