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He must. He must. His sister's voice jerked his head round to her again as she cried, "Go on! Why don't you? You're frightened. You never have, have you?"

"Go away. Do you hear? Go away."

She made a sound like a laugh and moved from the tree, but as soon as he turned his head from her she stopped and she did not take her eyes off the figures on the ground, not even when the child came running from the track, crying, "Our Cissiel Our Cissiel Eehl Ohi Don't l" then stood some distance away wailing like a banshee.

It was the exploring hand and the contact of strange warm flesh that brought Cissie back to consciousness. One second she didn't know where she was, the next she was screaming aloud; and for minutes she tore and struggled with the body, first in an effort to escape, then for no apparent purpose. After that, life seemed to flow from her and she lay still, like one dead. Her eyes wide, tear-bleared, she stared upwards, conscious of the fair head nestled in the crook of her neck; but she had no energy now to push the body from her. Not even when she heard the terrible voice thundering as if God himself were speaking and the sound of a whiplash flicking through the air did she move. She only knew that the body was lifted from her as if a mighty hand had swept it aside as it would a fly. She closed her eyes tightly against an indescribable pain, not in her body now but in her heart; and when she opened them again it was to see a man standing above her. He was tall and unbending and his face was a dark bluish red; in one hand he held a whip and in the other the young man, who was trying desperately to adjust his clothes.

Her hands fumbling, she pushed down her skirt and petticoat and rolled on to her face; and when some minutes later she dragged herself to her knees there was nobody near her, only Sarah. When she got to her feet she turned her head sideways and looked towards the road where the coach was starting up. Then she picked up the milk can; she did not go towards the farm but turned in the direction whence she had come and Sarah followed her, some paces behind, not daring to speak and still crying.

If Lord Fischel had ever been in doubt as to the devil walking the earth he was no longer so, for he was assured now that the devil was in full possession of his daughter.

That his son should take his pleasure with a girl of the people was not out of order--the needs of the flesh must be met. God made allowances for that; and that was one of the services the common people provided; but that he should take her in the open, and in view of the road, was to be wholly condemned. Even in such acts as this acertain amount of decorum was to be observed. But that his daughter should stand and witness the process touched on something so unnatural, so evil that his very bowels churned when he thought of it.

He stared at her now, her eyes as black as coals, her face white, showing up the red weal where his whip had caught her, and he could not prevent himself from bringing his hand up and across her other cheek with such force that she staggered and flopped into the big leather chair to the side of the study window. Glaring down at her now, he hissed through thin tight lips, "You're scum, Miss, scum, and you must be treated as such. Your unnatural action today has settled your future for you; you'll go to your Aunt Anna's in Scotland and there you will remain until you are civilized enough to return to decent society."

"No! No!" She pulled herself on to the edge of the chair. One hand still covering her face and all the dark, fiery spirit going out of her, she begged, "Please; no, not to Aunt Anna's, please. Father. I'll I'll behave. It was because we had been drinking ..."

"You had whati" "We ... we got some wine from the cellar." She did not lay the entire blame of this on Clive.

"We ... we did not know what we were doing."

"You knew what you were doing when you took your horse and knocked the walls down of that girl's abode; you knew what you were doing when you tied her young brother to the trap; you know what you're doing today also. You could have stopped such action;

you are stronger than he in all ways. "

She was on her feet now, pleading no more.

"I'll not go to Scotland;

it'll be like going to my grave. That, that barren island . I warn you. Father, I won't go. "

He turned from her and rang a bell; then looking at her over his shoulder he said, "You'll go. You'll go by coach and you'll leave the day after tomorrow in the care of Hatton and his wife. I'm sending a messenger on in the morning to give notice to your aunt." He did not for a moment consider whether his sister would be pleased to have her niece, he only knew that he would make it so worth her while that in her straitened circumstances--her father had left her nothing in his will--it would be foolish of her to refuse. Moreover, having no children of her own, she'd likely welcome someone on whom she could inflict her doctrine of virtue through austerity.

He said to Hatton when he appeared in the doorway, "Tell Mrs. Hatton that Miss Isabelle is to be locked in her room and that she must take her meals to her. You'll also tell her to dismiss her maid. I will give her a fortnight's wages in lieu of notice, together with a reference; you will find them on my desk in the morning.... And, Hatton"

"Yes, m'Lord?"

"Be prepared to escort my daughter to Scotland the day after tomorrow.

Mrs. Hatton will accompany you. "

He turned and looked at his daughter, her hands to her throat as if struggling for breath, but he felt not the slightest pity for her.

On the morning following Isabelle's departure Clive was summoned to his father's study; and when he came and stood in front of his desk, Lord Fischel wanted to rap out, "Stand up straight, boyl" but refrained because he knew they would straighten him up where he was going. What he said to him was, "Have a small valise packed and be ready to leave in half-an-hour's time."

Clive wet his lips before he asked quietly, "May I inquire. Sir, where I am going?"

"You may. You're bound for Newcastle; from there you will be heading for the Cape, East Indies, and Malaya. Where you go after that depends on Captain Spellman's charter. You will be sailing on the Virago; your position will be that of a deck hand. But many a man has risen from there to captain; it will be entirely up to you. "

For a moment he thought his son was going to collapse over the desk in front of him, and he was forced to say by way of some comfort, "Captain Spell- man is a good man, just and honest; he is one of the best captains in the Compton Line, in which line, you may know, we hold a great many shares."

"Fa ... Father."

"Yes?"

"I'm always unwell on the sea, I don't like the sea. Would it not be possible for you to send me somewhere else?"

Lord Fischel looked at his son and there was a sadness within him.

There was no fight in the boy; it was as he had always known, their natures had got mixed up. It was strange, too, he thought, that he had whipped his daughter in passion on that hillside, and in this room, passion dead, he had struck her; yet when he had brought his son before him that same night he had not lifted his hand to him. He had even considered not heaping any retribution on the boy other than sending him back to school; yet he had told himself that would be unjust. He did not own to himself at that point the real reason why he was sending him and his sister away.

It wasn't until late in the afternoon when the tide was full that he stood on the quay in Newcastle in a position from which he would not be observed and watched the Virago, her sails set, her deck alive with scurrying figures, pass down the river; and his heart knew a strange loneliness that brought the truth to the forefront of his mind. Yet still he did not face it squarely and admit that by his supposed justice he had rid himself of their presence for some years ahead, and also made sure that neither of tliem would encounter their mother; but he looked upon their departure and the incidents that led up to it as the workings of God in answer to his unspoken prayers God had ways of protecting and assisting those who obeyed his commandments.

"Do you hear what I said. Jimmy?"

"N ... No, Matthew."

"I was tellin' you, lad, why we soak the nave of the wheel in boiling water. Now look. Jimmy." Matthew went on his hunkers before the boy.

"You've got to pay attention else you'll never learn this trade, not in seven years or seventeen. You were as eager as a calf after milk at first but something's come over you. You tired of it?"

"Oh, no! No, man ... I mean Matthew." Jimmy shook his head and his face worked as if he were pulling himself out of a dream.

"Why, no, Matthew, I'm not tired of it; I like it fine, nothin' better.

I'm sorry, Matthew, I didn't pay attention. I will after this, I will.

I.

I heard what you said about getting the dish of the wheel, like testing the mort ices for it, an' I remember what you told me about the dowels yesterday. "

"But memory isn't enough. Jimmy lad, if you don't put your rememberin'

into your hands.... You know, I spoilt a spoke this morning on the bench 'cos you didn't crank the wheel hard enough. Now you've got to take a pull at yourself.... Aw" he put his hand on to the boy's shoulder "There's no need for you to bubble. Lord, I'm only tellin'

you, and quietly;

I haven't clouted your ear or anythin'. "

When Jimmy turned away and hid his face in the crook of his elbow and his shoulders began to heave, Matthew pulled him gently towards him again and said quietly, "Look, something's wrong with you. Tell me what it is. Has me mother been getting' at you?"

Jimmy shook his head at this, but when, after a pause, Matthew asked,

"Is ... is something wrong up there?" Jimmy's head didn't move and after a longer pause Matthew made himself say, "Is it Cissie?"

The boy's head now drooped further on to his chest and the tears ran off the end of his nose and on to the back of his hand, but he said nothing; and Matthew, getting to his feet, put his hand on the boy's shoulder and led him into a small store room that led off the shop, and there, closing the door behind him, he looked down at him and said grimly, "Look, Jimmy, I know Cissie's unhappy." He stopped himself from adding, "She's not the only one," and went on.

"But she's young and she'll get over it. You see ... well" --he rubbed his hand hard across his mouth"--there's things you don't understand, things a man has to do but...."

Jimmy, sniffing the tears back off his nose with the aid of his thumb, said quickly now, "

"Tisn't you, Matthew, 'tisn't you." When he paused, staring into Matthew's face, Matthew asked quietly, "Well, if it isn't me, what is it?"

Jimmy drew his bottom lip right into his mouth and scraped the teeth over the skin until his lip sprang from under them with a painful sucking snap, and then he put his hand to his head and held it there before he said, "She was mated."

Matthew hadn't heard aright. He said, "What did you say?"

"She was mated." The words were a whisper but Matthew's shoulders drew back from them. His chin pulled in to his neck, his hand came up and his fingers ran through his thick hair. His mouth opened to speak then closed again, and Jimmy said, between sniffs, "It was as her and Sarah were goin' for the milk. She met up with the lady from the Hall--she was the one who had caught Joe nabbin' the rabbit and brought her horse and kicked down the walls-and the young master and it was in sage going round the butt near Thornton's Farm. And she tells Cissie to go back and out of the way, and they were nearly in the openin' and when Cissie wouldn't she took her stick to her, an' Cissie tried to get it away and the young master got in at ween them and him and Cissie fell, and Sarah said Cissie lay still ... an' then...." Jimmy's eyes lowered, his head drooped, and his voice had a thin, faraway, unreal sound as he ended,

"He mated her, and the young miss laughed, and our Cissie cries nearly every night."

Matthew sat down on a box and looked over Jimmy's head to the row of saws and tools hanging on the wall. He had the appearance of a man who had been winded. It was fully five minutes before he said to the boy who was standing looking at him in bewilderment now, "When did this happen?"

"More than a week since but I didn't know till Sunday. She's different, Matthew, quiet, and not bothering about putting the walls up now."

Matthew rose slowly to his feet, then went through the shop and into the yard. After he had harnessed the horse to the cart he went back to the shop door and said to Jimmy, "When Walter comes back tell him I've been called out an' I won't be long. You sweep out, then clean the stable ... right?"

When he drew the horse to a stop on the track below the cave there was no sign of anyone about, but when he walked through the doorway of the half walls he saw her. She was sitting in the corner sorting mushrooms. Nellie in the basket to one side of her and Annie and Charlotte at the other.

Her glance met his for a fleeting second but in that time the whiteness of her face took on a flush. He stood for a moment looking at her bent head, and when the children scampered to him and clung round his legs he lifted Annie up in his arms. But still looking at Cissie, he said,

"Hello there."

"Hello." Her voice sounded throaty as if she had a cold.

,

He groped in his pocket now and brought from it a thin strip of barley sugar and, snapping it in two, he gave one piece to Annie and the other to Charlotte and, putting Annie down, he said to Charlotte, "Go to the bum and find me a lucky pebble. It must be a big one mind, flat, brown, and shiny, and if you find it there's a ha' penny for you."

Charlotte's eyes sprung wide and she made an ecstatic high noise like a whistle; then, grabbing Annie's hand, she ran out of the enclosure, and he was left alone with Cissie.

As he drooped on to his hunkers in front of her her hands went on sorting the mushrooms, the broken ones into a basin, the big flat ones into one straw skiff, the button ones into another; and as he watched her. Jimmy's tale formed a picture in his mind and he saw the whole thing happening to her; and his teeth, grinding against each other, made an audible noise. He did not ask himself how he was going to broach the subject to her, he had never been one for beating around the bush; he said thickly, "Jimmy told me."