Upon this scene arrived John Grirnbal and his sweetheart.  They stood for a while at the open orchard gate, gazed at the remote illumination, and heard the distant song.  Then they returned to discussion of their own affairs; while at hand, unseen, the grey watcher moved impatiently and anxiously.  The thing he desired did not come about, and he blew on his cold hands and swore under his breath.  Only an orchard hedge now separated them, and he might have listened to Phoebe’s soft speech had he crept ten yards nearer, while John Grimbal’s voice he could not help hearing from time to time.  The big man was just asking a question not easy to answer, when an unexpected interruption saved Phoebe from the difficulty of any reply.

“Sometimes I half reckon a memory of that blessed boy still makes you glum, my dear.  Is it so?  Haven’t you forgot him yet?”

As he spoke an explosion, differing much in sound from those which continued to startle the night, rang suddenly out of the distance.  It arose from a spot on the confines of the orchard, and was sharp in tone—­sharp almost as the human cries which followed it.  Then the distant lights hastened towards the theatre of the catastrophe.  “What has happened?” cried Phoebe, thankful enough to snatch conversation away from herself and her affairs.

“Easy to guess.  That broken report means a burst gun.  One of those old fools has got excited, put too much powder into his blunderbuss and blown his head off, likely as not.  No loss either!”

“Please, please go and see!  Oh, if ’tis Billy Blee come to grief, faither will be lost.  Do ’e run, Mr. Grimbal—­Jan, I mean.  If any grave matter’s failed out, send them bwoys off red-hot for doctor.”

“Stop here, then.  If any ugly thing has happened, there need be no occasion for you to see it.”

He departed hastily to where a distant galaxy of fiery eyes twinkled and tangled and moved this way and that, like the dying sparks on a piece of burnt paper.

Then the patient grey shadow, rewarded by chance at last, found his opportunity, slipped into the hedge just above Grimbal’s sweetheart, and spoke to her.

“Phoebe, Phoebe Lyddon!”

The voice, dropping out of empty air as it seemed, made Phoebe jump, and almost fall; but there was an arm gripped round her, and a pair of hot lips on hers before she had time to open her mouth or cry a word.

“Will!”

“Ess, so I be, alive an’ kicking.  No time for anything but business now.  I’ve followed ’e for this chance.  Awnly heard four day ago ’bout the fix you’d been drove to.  An’ Clem’s made it clear ’t was all my damn silly silence to blame.  I had a gert thought in me and wasn’t gwaine to write till—­but that’s awver an’ done, an’ a purty kettle of feesh, tu.  We must faace this coil first.”

“Thank God, you can forgive me.  I’d never have had courage to ax ’e.”

“You was drove into it.  I knaw there’s awnly wan man in the world for ‘e.  Ban’t nothin’ to forgive.  I never ought to have left ’e—­a far-seein’ man, same as me.  Blast him!  I’d like to tear thicky damned fur off you, for I lay it comed from him.”