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When her maid brought the glass she helped herself to another measure of brandy, and stood sipping it while she looked out onto the grey day.

The sky was heavy and low, there was a feeling in the air that spelled snow. She wanted to get out, ride, walk; she wanted movement.

Why shouldn't she join the shoot? She could say her cold was better.

She put her hand out flat against the window pane and watched the heat from her fingers outline them on the glass, and when she took her hand away she didn't move until the last fragment of steam had evaporated and the outline was no more. Her thinking brought her round almost with a jump and she was crying to the maid, "Robsoni Come her el Robsoni" And when the girl came hurrying into the room, she said, "My riding habit, and quick now. Quick!" And as the girl ran to the wardrobe to get the habit she started to unhook her own clothes to aid the process.

The third incident took place at the mill. Matthew had just returned on horseback from Benham. As he entered the main yard he saw Straker come scurrying through the door from the house yard and at the same time he noticed that the horse was still harnessed to the flour dray, and he knew without even having to guess that Straker, who had been out delivering, had just now also delivered a bit of little-tattle to the mistress.

Matthew was well aware that Straker, for various reasons, didn't like him--the main one being that he was now master of the mill, whereas before he had been little more than a hand like himself. Another reason was that he had chewed him off one day when he brought him a bit of gossip, and had told him that if he spent less time jabbering to the customers his journeys would be shorter and he would have more time for work. This was the day for delivery at the Hall and by the looks of things he had brought back a piece of gossip that had warranted no delay before being passed on.

He glanced in the mill and saw that William and Joe were busy on the threshing floor and he called to William to get the store cart ready and harness the horse; then he went into the house.

Rose was busy at the table, and Peggy, a woman from Brockdale village, was on her knees whitening the hearth. As he passed through the kitchen he turned his head in Rose's direction, saying, "I'm going to change, an' I'd like a bite." But he didn't immediately make for the stairs; instead he went along the passage to the office, and he had hardly closed the door behind him when it was opened again, and she came into the room and repeated his words, "Going to change. An' you'd like a bite." Then she added, "And where you off to the day?"

"It's Friday, isn't it, the second in the month? I'm going into Newcastle, of course, to the bank, and then on to the chandler's."

"There now," she said mockingly, her two fists thrust into the hollows of her broad hips.

"It's only twelve o'clock. You've never left the house afore one on a Friday for Newcastle."

"Aye, that's true enough, but I've just managed to get there on the bank closin'. I'm going earlier the day so I don't have to rush. Now what have you got to say about that?"

"Just that you might be making a stop on your journey."

Oh, God Almighty! He gripped his head with his large hands and they trembled and the knuckles showed white through the skin.

"Well" --her voice had a careless, airy sound to it~"I thought you might just be calling in to say good-bye, seeing she's all set to move to her mansion."

Slowly he turned and looked at her, and she said mockingly, "Don't tell me this has come as a surprise to you. You know all her business; surely she wouldn't keep you in the dark about this now, would she?

"

His hands hung slack at his sides now and he waited, but she had to make a prelude as she always did before touching on the vital point.

"Byl the trouble one body can cause. And you wouldn't mind so much if it was somebody of importance, but when they're scum, well, you've got to ask yourself, haven't you?"

He had learned to still his tongue because he knew that if that was let loose his hands would become loose too, and once they touched her they wouldn't be able to stop. And of this he was afraid.

"Didn't you know there were great doings at the Hall yesterday? Myl they said never, even in the old man's time, the one afore the last one who begot half the countryside, never did he cause a scene like that of the young lord. Stopped them going off with the hairn, he did; caught them in the nick of time, kicked, lashed out, bashed, knocked everybody sprawling, then up with the hairn and takes him.... Now where do you think he takes him? Well, to his mother, of course. It's natural, isn't it, that he should take him to his mother?

But just until Tuesday. Well, that's what they say, just until Tuesday when her big house will be ready. In Newcastle it is, thirty rooms so they tell, Bowmer says, and a great stack of servants. Now it's like a fairy tale, isn't it, from rags to riches? And you know something else? He's leaving on Tuesday an' all. And where do you think he's going to live? I'll give you a guess. "

He was near the desk, where stood a big glass inkwell. From the corner of his eye he saw the light glinting on it.

He gripped his hands tightly together in front of him and looked down at them as he said, "Get out of me sight, do you hear! Get out of me sightl" Now the mockery went from her voice and she cried, "Out of your sightl You'd like me out of your sight altogether, wouldn't you? You're thinkin' of ways to get rid of me all the time, aren't you? Oh, you needn't tell me, I can see your mind working every minute of the day.

But you can take it from me I'll be here when you're gone. Get that into your head, when you're pushing the daisies up I'll be here, an'

I'll be ruling as is me right. " Then pulling her lips tightly in between her teeth, she bit on them before saying, " God, why did I let mese lt in for you? " And he, unable to curb his tongue any longer, cried at her, " For the simple reason I was the only one in straits dire enough to take you. "

On this her rough skin took on a bluish tinge, her small eyes became round dots of dark light; and as her hand whipped out in the direction of a brass vase used for holding pipe spills, he shouted, "You throw that an' I promise you it'll be the last thing you'll ever throw."

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Such was his tone, such was the look on his face that her hand became still on the rim of the vase, and he went past her and out of the room and up the stairs, and, tearing off his breeches and coat, he changed his clothes. Then taking a chamois leather purse from a drawer, he picked up his tall hat and went out and down the stairs and through the kitchen, which was empty now; and William was standing in the yard with the cart and horse ready. He paused for a moment before mounting the cart; then, looking at William, he said under his breath, "Have you had any word from Cissie?"

"You mean the day, Matthew?"

"Aye."

"No, Matthew. Is anything the matter? Is she all right? She was all right Sunday."

"Yes, yes, she's all right." He nodded at the boy.

"I ... I just wondered." He mounted the box thinking, It could all be a story. She would never make any move without letting the lads know, and if she was going to be in so much clover it was ten to one she would take them with her. Still, on the other hand, she hadn't had much time had she, if this upset only happened yesterday? But he never thought she'd do it, and she wouldn't have done it if it wasn't for the hairn. Damn the hairn!

He shortened his route, although he knew he stood the chance of being bogged down. Taking the road to Rosier's mine, he forked right, then cut over the rough pot-holed track that led to the open fells which would bring him down to the road that skirted the boundary wall of the Hall.

It was just before he reached the road that he saw a man running hell for leather across the open tells. One minute he'd be in a hollow and the next minute on a hump, then he would jump a gully here and there.

The figure was too distant for him to recognize but he thought the man was a poacher and the beaters after him. There was a shoot going on some 1

where roundabout. But then no man would be so foolhardy as to poach in the middle of a shoot, unless he wanted his brains blown out.

As the cart continued to move forward the man was lost to his view. He rounded the bend and another hundred yards or so farther on he stopped, and, quickly jumping down from the cart, mounted the slope.

One second he was hurrying forward, the next he was frozen to the spot, his eyes looking at something his brain for the moment denied seeing.

Before him were three people, two of them spaced within a distance of fifty feet of each other; these were Cissie and a woman with a gun.

Cissie was standing with her back tight against the corner wall of the dwelling; and lying breast pressed against a hump, a gun to her shoulder, her eye on its sights, was a strange woman; the third figure was the man who had been running, and him he recognized now as young Fischel. He, too, had a gun and he was standing dead still on a hillock some distance away. His gun was half cocked, but it was his voice he used, and he was calling now, desperately, "Isabellel Isabellel Listen to me. Don't l Don't l" Matthew saw the woman's head turn slightly to the side; then once again her eyes were concentrating down the length of the gun, and when she fired it there came the sound of a double report.

As he saw Cissie slide down the wall he heard himself screaming,

"Christ! Christ!" And then he was kneeling beside her, holding her to him, crying, "Cissie! Aw, Cissie!"

Her eyes were open and she was breathing deeply, and she pushed him away with her hand as it to get air, and he gasped at her, "Where?

Where you hurt? "

In answer she made one small movement with her head, and then with one hand she began tentatively to feel her chest and shoulder; following this, her fingers moved to her cheek from where the blood was running and in which was embedded a sliver of stone.

He pulled her hand away and examined her face;

then gasped again, "You all right? You all right?" And she moved her head once more; and as he lifted her up on to her feet and she leaned against the wall she slewed her gaze to the side and there, about six inches away, was the place where the bullet had struck and slivered the sandstone. Matthew's gaze followed hers and he exclaimed in awe, "My God!" Then he turned about and screwed his eyes up to bring into focus the man and woman on the mound. And again he said, "My Godt" for the woman he saw now was hanging over the mound, her arms stretched downwards, her head at a queer angle, and the man was kneeling beside her with the gun still in his hands.

Cissie, too, was looking at the figures on the mound and she groaned,

"Oh nol No. Oh, dear, dear Godi Oh nol" Sarah and Charlotte came running from the house at this moment, crying, "Our Cissiel Our Cissie!" And Matthew turned on them and yelled, "Get back in there!

Do you hear? Get back in there and don't come out until I tell you."

They backed from him and fled inside and he rushed after them and put his hand round the door and took out the key and locked it from the outside. Then running back to Cissie, where she was moving slowly now across the open ground like a sleepwalker, he said, "Stay where you are a minute. Stay where you are." Then he pushed her back towards the wall and he himself went forward towards the mound.

He gazed down at the girl with the hole in her neck from which the blood was pouring and soaking her fine clothes, then he looked at the young man who, up to that moment, he had hated as only a man can hate another who had taken the virginity which he thought of as his own right and who was now aiming to follow up his raping in a more legalized way. He saw that he was trying to speak but couldn't. When he swayed and put one hand to his head Matthew thrust out his arm and steadied him, then watched the young fellow's head droop forward and his face screw up into agonized contortions before he put his hand across his mouth as if he were going to be sick.

"Come on. Come away." When Matthew went to turn him round, Clive shook him off. Blinking rapidly and with the muscles of his face straightening, he quickly knelt down and, gently turning his sister over, put his hand inside her habit. She felt warm, but there was no movement.

Now Matthew, kneeling beside him, pulled off the white muffler from under his cape, and, lifting the lolling head, wound it gently but firmly around the red-stained neck. And as he did so the strong smell of brandy was whiffed up to him and he, too, felt sick as his fingers came in contact with the warm, sticky blood. He said now quietly,

"There's a door down below. I'll bring it up." He rose from his knees and hurried down the slope to where Cissie was standing supporting herself against the wall once more, her eyes staring from her head. He put his hand on her and said, softly, "Go inside; you're shivering. Go on, you can do no good out here." But she made no response until he said, "I'm going to take the old door." Then she followed him slowly into the wood house.

When he had picked up the door and gone out, she automatically, but still moving like someone in a dream, began to dear aside the wood that the children had been chopping earlier. Then she moved the chopping block into the corner; which done, she stood waiting for their arrival.

When they brought her in she had to grip tightly on the edge of the sawing cradle to steady herself. She stared at the dead-white face, the blood-soaked wrapping around the neck, the green velvet habit, the brown leather riding boots, the pointed toes sticking directly upwards.

The door lowered, they all stood still like hypnotized beings in a deep, heavy silence until it was broken by a child's cry coming through the wall; and dive's head turned in its direction. Then he groaned aloud.

"Sit yourself down." Matthew took his arm again and led him to the chopping block.

Clive sat on it and dropped his head into his hands, and after a moment, during which Matthew and Cissie looked down at him, he heaved a deep sigh. Then, straightening his back, he said haltingly, | "Her her horse, it's tethered on the hillside; I'll ... I'll ride to the Hall."