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Matthew gathered his lower lip into his mouth and gnawed at it before he said, "Take your time ... Sir ... and ... and whatever comes of it I'll... I'll be a witness. You had to do it."

Clive looked at the the miller. He had said he had to do it. But did he? Did he have to do it? Yes; far better him than anyone else, for if she had killed this girl she would have died anyway. When all the facts of the case were brought to the fore, the jury wasn't assembled which would dare have let her off, well born though she was. She seemed due to die in any case, and now he was going to follow her.

They might not hang him but they would make him pay the penalty in some way, for wasn't this last act the result of his raping a young girl?

And there were many puritans in law now who felt it their duty to make examples of rakes. Why? Why did he ever come back? Why hadn't he gone on sailing the seas? If only, in this moment, he could find himself on a heaving deck in the middle of the ocean . "What did you say?"

"I was saying. Sir, to wait a while." Matthew did not now find it difficult to address this man as "Sir" -his hate of him had vanished.

The dead one lying there had, he felt, created a barrier between the young fellow and Cissie that was impregnable. He went on, "Cissie's gone to make a strong cup of tea.

And, Sir, I've . I've been thinking. There could be a way out of this. "

Clive looked towards the figure lying on the door. It was covered up now with a black cloak. He hadn't noticed the miller doing that, he hadn't noticed the girl going out. He asked now, "What time is it?"

"Getting on for two. Sir."

Getting on for two. It was just over an hour since he had come out of the wood on Thornton's farm. The shooting had been spasmodic because of the light. He had left the main group and made his way back through Thornton's and was in sight of the North Lodge when he saw her come out of the gate, turn immediately right, and gallop down the road. He hadn't called to her--it would have been fruitless-and he hadn't to think twice of her destination. He had leaped forward as if he had been released from a spring; and he had taken to the open fell land without any hope of cutting her off, because that was impossible the way she was riding, but praying, as he ran, that he'd be in time to stop her doing anything mad. And in a way his prayers had been answered. He had no thought to kill her. No! Nol Not that; he had aimed at her shoulder, but that slight turning of her head when he had called to her had deflected his own aim and consequently hers.

"Look. Look." Matthew was talking as he might have done to Jimmy.

"Pay attention to me for a minute. As I said, I've been thinkin'. It was all an accident. If you hadn't stopped her she would have done for Cissie. You must look at it like that." Matthew paused; the young fellow wasn't really with him, he wasn't listening, he was dazed. He said now, his voice louder, "Were you out shooting. Sir?"

"Yes, yes; I was out shooting." He spoke as if he were repeating a phrase he had learned by heart.

"Well then, look. She ... she was likely out shoot- in' an' all. That could be so, couldn't it?"

"Yes, yes, that could be so." Clive moved his head once.

"Well now, in a short time it'll... it'll be dark. By the way. Sir, where was the shoot?"

"Over Thornton's land towards Willey's, the west side of the estate."

His tone was weary and held a slight impatience.

"The west side?" Matthew nodded his head in a series of small movements, then went on, "They'll have been shootin' around there all day, and accidents can happen in shoots." He now bent down and stared into dive's face and muttered below his breath, "You get what I'm driving at. Sir? If she was to be found around there it could be an accident; it's happened afore, like the one at the Gallow's Dip."

"The what?"

"The Gallow's Dip. You wouldn't know it by that name. It's a piece of land; it's actually in one of Thornton's fields. There's a hump in the ground, it runs along like a ridge. If you're a tallish fellow and walking in the hollow your head appears to anyone || on the other side as if it were bobbing along the ground. That's what they said, at the inquiry when the keeper shot a poacher; the keeper said that the head was bobbing along the ground. It was bad light and he took it for a rabbit. An' he got off. It must have happened in your great-grandfather's time. But do you get what I'm aiming at? Accidents happen at shoots, keepers take pot-shots at shadows; every movement from dusk on is a poacher to a keeper. If she could be found round there ... well, like I said, it would be taken for an accident, because after all that's how it was, you never aimed to kill her, did you?"

Clive didn't answer but he swallowed hard at the saliva sticking in his throat. He wasn't really listening to all the miller was saying, for the longing was strong in him again to be on the sea, miles and miles away from all this. What about the child and her, and the house he was going to visit between voyages? The thought came to him as he saw her coming through the door, a mug of steaming liquid in each hand; and when she offered him one of the mugs he took it from her and for the first time on this day he looked into her face; and he saw the cut on her cheek and the dried blood where the bullet had grazed it, and he thought. My God! as near as that, and for a fleeting moment he was glad he had done what he had done, for Isabelle had set out deliberately to murder this girl.

He sipped slowly at the tea. It was bitter, and distasteful, very much like the stuff they brewed in the galley; but he drank it as he had for four years. There came another blank in his thinking when he was unaware of the movements about him and he was brought back to the present by the sound of low sobbing and he became aware that she was crying and that the miller was holding her in his arms and stroking her hair gently, and she was resting against him as if it were her natural place. The sight made him sad, deeply sad, and he wanted to get up and go out; but he sat on looking at them and listening to the miller talking.

"Go on in," he was saying, "and stay in. Now listen to me. Stay in and try to make yourself forget everything that's happened. Tell the girls that an' all.... Anyway, they didn't see anything. They didn't get round the corner, they could have only heard the narration. Go on now.

And if I can't get over the night I'll be here some time the morrow.

And no matter who comes you know nothing. Mind that now, you know nothing. An' you got that. " He touched the dried blood on her face gently with his forefinger.

"You got that from a sliver of wood, remember."

Cissie turned from him and looked towards Clive. He had saved her life and he had put his own in peril. She wanted to run to him and clasp his hands and . and bring comfort to him in some way, for his eyes looked so deeply, deeply sad, he looked entirely lost. He wasn't the young, slim, commanding figure of the man who had brought the child to her yesterday. When his gaze dropped from hers she turned away and went out slowly.

And now Matthew stood looking down at the shape of the figure lying under his cloak and his mind was working at a rate it had never reached before in his life. He knew that the plan he was hatching in his mind wasn't purely altruistic, though at the moment he was both grateful to and sorry for the fellow sitting there. It was of Cissie he was thinking; and, through her, of himself. If this fellow here was brought up for the killing of his sister the sympathy of the people would not go to him, or the girl he had saved, but would be lavished on the dead, and no matter what sentence they passed on him, short of hanging him, it would be light in comparison with the sentence that would fall on a girl who lived rough on the fells, who'd had a child to the accused man and who, they would say, had sold the child to its grandfather; then when the father appeared again egged him on to have the child returned to her. Oh, he knew the pattern it would take. He had in his time been in the Shields Court and the Durham Assizes and listened to cases and marveled at the twisting of the law men. But it wasn't the condemnation of the law men he feared most for Cissie but that of her own kind. They would hound her from the villages and the hamlets around here; and, moreover, they would drag himself into it and name him as one of her men. He could stand that, for he was so named already, but it would only go to blacken her. She'd had enough; for years now she'd been hounded in one way or another and this would be the last straw.

As Clive rose to his feet Matthew turned sharply towards him and, standing before him, he said low, "This what I'm thinking of doing.

I've got it all fixed in me mind. Now listen to me. " He was speaking again as he would to one of his own kind.

"As soon as it's dark enough I'll carry her down to me cart. I'll tie the horse to the back, an' take the road by which I came, an' when I get to the fork I'll make a wide detour circling the North Lodge, and I'll come out by Fell Gap, then make my way down the track by Gallow's Dip, Then I'll pick a spot along there where I'll say I found her. I'll leave a bit evidence of some sort so that I'll be able to take them back and show them the place. And I'll do it properly, I'll ... I'll rough up the ground a bit...."

"No, no!" Clive, seeming to throw off his stupor, thrust him aside.

"Don't be absurd. I couldn't allow this. No, no; you could be caught before you got there. Do you realize that?"

"What would that signify? As long as she's away from here I could even say I found her on the road below, or any other place; but there'll be fewer questions if she's found on the place where the shoot was the day. Look, Sir; all I ask is that you go now, for the sooner you're in the house the better. Go in as if you'd just..."

"No." Clive's voice was calm and firm now.

"It's very good of you, miller, but I can't accept such an offer. It's impossible."

Matthew stepped back from him and let out a long oath finishing with,

"Christ's blood! What's the good of another of you dying? Cissie's now got one on her mind but if she should have you an' all, even if you were just put along the line, it will drive her insane. And then there's the child. Have you given him a thought? When the tale comes to him when he's older there won't be a word of truth left in it....

It's all senseless."

Yes, the miller was right, it was all senseless. He was a cute fellow, this miller. Perhaps he had been a poacher in his day; he was reasoning like a desperate man. Yet it was himself who was the desperate man, e and he couldn't think at all. What was the plan he had suggested? She was out shooting . ?

It was a full five minutes later when, still listening to Matthew, he said thickly, "If you are bent on doing this for me then I must go with you in case you meet someone before you reach the ... the allotted place."

"No, no. Sir." Matthew shook his head vigorously.

"Yes!" The word was almost rapped out and it conveyed to Matthew that the young fellow was once more in command of himself; so he said,

"Well, Sir, have it your own way for the time being, but stay where you are for the minute, and I'll get the horse an' bring it here in case he should be spotted. There's plenty of room; this is where I stable mine."

There was a moment's pause as they looked at each other. Then Matthew went hurriedly out and Clive turned his back on the black-covered figure on the door and stood staring into the deep gathering twilight.

Within five minutes Matthew came back leading the horse, and the animal snorted and reared until Clive went to its head and spoke softly to it.

But it remained uneasy and trembling, conscious, as animals are, of death.

Twice during the next hour as he alternately sat and stared at the figure on the door, while sorrow cut at him like a knife, then walked the narrow space of the floor, he burst out, saying, "Look. It's very generous but ... but I can't go through with it, not this way." And Matthew said simply, "Wait, just hang on. Once it's dark it'll be all right. I'm telling you. Sir, it'll be all right."

When the light had almost gone Matthew went and stood at the far end of the door and looked towards Clive, who, he saw, had to make a great effort before he could walk the three steps forward and pick up the other end.

Five minutes later the body was on the cart, the cloak over it, and the horse tethered by a long rope to the back. Then Matthew said, "Get up.

Sir, an' I'll lead him." And he went to the horse's head and they started.

He had not lit his lamps and he knew that it would be very unfortunate and put a spoke in the whole business if he were to meet anything on the road before he could get on to the fell track, but he had to take that chance.

The chance came off and sometime later, as he heard a church clock in the distance striking five, he stopped the horse and lit the lamps. By half-past five they had skirted the North Lodge and come within half a mile of the Thornton land; and before he turned off the narrow track that would lead to the road running by the west wall he stopped the cart and said, "Now, Sir, I'm all right; I'm going to drop you off just afore we reach the road, an' it you keep right you'll come to the Lodge within fifteen minutes." He paused, and they stared at each other through the dim reflection of the lamps. Then Matthew, speaking as man to man, said, "So far, so good. You've got nothin' to worry about; the only thing to do is to keep your mouth shut. What's done's done; nothing you can say can undo it. Think of it that way. And think an'

all, what good is it going to do you or anybody else stuck in gaol for years? It's likely to kill your father an' all. "

It was strange, but in all this he had never thought once of his father--and here was the miller saying it was likely to kill him. And that was true. His daughter murdered and his son hanged, or, as the miller had just said, rotting in prison, and his grandchild taken from him. Christ alive! What had he done? If he had only left things as they were, left the child where he was, not played the Don Quixote, all this would never have happened. But then it had happened, and the reason for its happening he could trace back to his own anger and hate towards his father, for he had wanted to hurt him, have his revenge on him for those years of squalid slavery and degradation. Yet within the past two hours he had not given him a thought. But this he knew now: the miller was right, this tragedy would kill his father; fast or slow it would kill him, and strangely now he did not want him to be hurt further.