I had whisky.

The good soul seized the flask, and went off hugging it.  She returned it to me half empty.

“Lapped it like a kitten laps milk.  I misdaoubt it’s straong, poor lamb, it lusened ’er tongue praaperly.  ‘I’ve a-done it,’ she says to me, ‘Mums-I’ve a-done it,’ an’ she laughed like a mad thing; and then, sir, she cried, an’ kissed me, an’ pusshed me thru the door.  Gude Lard!  What is ’t she’s a-done...?”

It rained all the next day and the day after.  About five o’clock yesterday the rain ceased; I started off to Kingswear on Hopgood’s nag to see Dan Treffry.  Every tree, bramble, and fern in the lanes was dripping water; and every bird singing from the bottom of his heart.  I thought of Pasiance all the time.  Her absence that day was still a mystery; one never ceased asking oneself what she had done.  There are people who never grow up—­they have no right to do things.  Actions have consequences—­and children have no business with consequences.

Dan was out.  I had supper at the hotel, and rode slowly home.  In the twilight stretches of the road, where I could touch either bank of the lane with my whip, I thought of nothing but Pasiance and her grandfather; there was something in the half light suited to wonder and uncertainty.  It had fallen dark before I rode into the straw-yard.  Two young bullocks snuffled at me, a sleepy hen got up and ran off with a tremendous shrieking.  I stabled the horse, and walked round to the back.  It was pitch black under the apple-trees, and the windows were all darkened.  I stood there a little, everything smelled so delicious after the rain; suddenly I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was being watched.  Have you ever felt like that on a dark night?  I called out at last:  “Is any one there?” Not a sound!  I walked to the gate-nothing!  The trees still dripped with tiny, soft, hissing sounds, but that was all.  I slipped round to the front, went in, barricaded the door, and groped up to bed.  But I couldn’t sleep.  I lay awake a long while; dozed at last, and woke with a jump.  A stealthy murmur of smothered voices was going on quite close somewhere.  It stopped.  A minute passed; suddenly came the soft thud as of something falling.  I sprang out of bed and rushed to the window.  Nothing—­but in the distance something that sounded like footsteps.  An owl hooted; then clear as crystal, but quite low, I heard Pasiance singing in her room: 

“The apples are ripe and ready to fall.  Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall.”

I ran to her door and knocked.

“What is it?” she cried.

“Is anything the matter?”

“Matter?”

“Is anything the matter?”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha!  Good-night!” then quite low, I heard her catch her breath, hard, sharply.  No other answer, no other sound.

I went to bed and lay awake for hours....

This evening Dan came; during supper he handed Pasiance a roll of music; he had got it in Torquay.  The shopman, he said, had told him that it was a “corker.”