Now the road up Haytersbank gully led to the farm, and nowhere else.  Still any one wishing to descend to the shore might do so by first going up to the Robsons’ house, and skirting the walls till they came to the little slender path down to the shore.  But by the farm, by the very house-door they must of necessity pass.  Philip slackened his pace, keeping under the shadow of the rock.  By-and-by Kinraid, walking on the sunlight open sands, turned round and looked long and earnestly towards Haytersbank gully.  Hepburn paused when he paused, but as intently as he looked at some object above, so intently did Hepburn look at him.  No need to ascertain by sight towards whom his looks, his thoughts were directed.  He took off his hat and waved it, touching one part of it as if with particular meaning.  When he turned away at last, Hepburn heaved a heavy sigh, and crept yet more into the cold dank shadow of the cliffs.  Each step was now a heavy task, his sad heart tired and weary.  After a while he climbed up a few feet, so as to mingle his form yet more completely with the stones and rocks around.  Stumbling over the uneven and often jagged points, slipping on the sea-weed, plunging into little pools of water left by the ebbing tide in some natural basins, he yet kept his eyes fixed as if in fascination on Kinraid, and made his way almost alongside of him.  But the last hour had pinched Hepburn’s features into something of the wan haggardness they would wear when he should first be lying still for ever.

And now the two men were drawing near a creek, about eight miles from Monkshaven.  The creek was formed by a beck (or small stream) that came flowing down from the moors, and took its way to the sea between the widening rocks.  The melting of the snows and running of the flooded water-springs above made this beck in the early spring-time both deep and wide.  Hepburn knew that here they both must take a path leading inland to a narrow foot-bridge about a quarter of a mile up the stream; indeed from this point, owing to the jutting out of the rocks, the land path was the shortest; and this way lay by the water-side at an angle right below the cliff to which Hepburn’s steps were leading him.  He knew that on this long level field path he might easily be seen by any one following; nay, if he followed any one at a short distance, for it was full of turnings; and he resolved, late as he was, to sit down for a while till Kinraid was far enough in advance for him to escape being seen.  He came up to the last rock behind which he could be concealed; seven or eight feet above the stream he stood, and looked cautiously for the specksioneer.  Up by the rushing stream he looked, then right below.

‘It is God’s providence,’ he murmured.  ‘It is God’s providence.’

He crouched down where he had been standing and covered his face with his hands.  He tried to deafen as well as to blind himself, that he might neither hear nor see anything of the coming event of which he, an inhabitant of Monkshaven at that day, well understood the betokening signs.