“Miss Wilson won’t let you.  It’s trespassing.”

“What matter!  Nobody lives in it, and the gate is off its hinges.  I only want to stand under the veranda—­not to break into the wretched place.  Besides, the landlord knows Miss Wilson; he won’t mind.  There’s a drop.”

Miss Carpenter looked up, and immediately received a heavy raindrop in her eye.

“Oh!” she cried.  “It’s pouring.  We shall be drenched.”

Agatha stopped, and the column broke into a group about her.

“Miss Wilson,” she said, “it is going to rain in torrents, and Jane and I have only our shoes on.”

Miss Wilson paused to consider the situation.  Someone suggested that if they hurried on they might reach Lyvern before the rain came down.

“More than a mile,” said Agatha scornfully, “and the rain coming down already!”

Someone else suggested returning to the college.

“More than two miles,” said Agatha.  “We should be drowned.”

“There is nothing for it but to wait here under the trees,” said Miss Wilson.

“The branches are very bare,” said Gertrude anxiously.  “If it should come down heavily they will drip worse than the rain itself.”

“Much worse,” said Agatha.  “I think we had better get under the veranda of the old chalet.  It is not half a minute’s walk from here.”

“But we have no right—­” Here the sky darkened threateningly.  Miss Wilson checked herself and said, “I suppose it is still empty.”

“Of course,” replied Agatha, impatient to be moving.  “It is almost a ruin.”

“Then let us go there, by all means,” said Miss Wilson, not disposed to stand on trifles at the risk of a bad cold.

They hurried on, and came presently to a green hill by the wayside.  On the slope was a dilapidated Swiss cottage, surrounded by a veranda on slender wooden pillars, about which clung a few tendrils of withered creeper, their stray ends still swinging from the recent wind, now momentarily hushed as if listening for the coming of the rain.  Access from the roadway was by a rough wooden gate in the hedge.  To the surprise of Agatha, who had last seen this gate off its hinges and only attached to the post by a rusty chain and padlock, it was now rehung and fastened by a new hasp.  The weather admitting of no delay to consider these repairs, she opened the gate and hastened up the slope, followed by the troop of girls.  Their ascent ended with a rush, for the rain suddenly came down in torrents.

When they were safe under the veranda, panting, laughing, grumbling, or congratulating themselves on having been so close to a place of shelter, Miss Wilson observed, with some uneasiness, a spade—­new, like the hasp of the gate—­sticking upright in a patch of ground that someone had evidently been digging lately.  She was about to comment on this sign of habitation, when the door of the chalet was flung open, and Jane screamed as a man darted out