dim. Somewhere a long way off a threshing-machine was droning, and as

the sound of it came and went, and rose and fell with the wind, Jim thought of his little lass; and how that one letter of hers old Margy had re-read to him so often had told how she had heard the sea sound so through the night, now more, now less. If she had not come back to the Rectory yesterday, as he hoped, was she up now and out on the beach?... but no--hardly! It was barely eight o'clock. Yes--there went the church-bells! But he could not count the strokes for the noise some hedge-sparrows made suddenly, almost close to his ear.

That was a harvest cart with a many horses, Jim supposed, and every horse with bells. Going to load up, at a guess; for it was soon gone by, and its bells a memory. Then another sound of wheels stole in, and grew. Not a cart; carts rattle. Some sort of carriage, coming from Furnival Station. Not indigenous to this village; Jim had learned every native wheel by heart. Not a very dashing carriage neither! It went slow, and the horse seemed to think of every step. A hired fly from the station, of course! Why didn't Jim spot that before?

Now, suppose it had been eight in the evening, it might have been Teacher bringing Lizarann from the station. At this time in the morning ridiculous, of course! Still, the thought was nice.

That fly had pulled up on the road, and not so far off. Jim could hear interchanges between the driver and his fare, evidently male and English. Did Jim know that voice?

"All right--pull up here! I'll get down and walk the rest of the way. How far is it?"

"For to step it afut? Twenty minutes, easy."

"Which does 'easy' mean?"

"Easy for time, mister. You'll have to be a bit brisk to do it in twenty minutes. Give you twenty-three, to do it without idlin'."

A foot on the road, a coach-door that wouldn't hasp, a discovery that the driver has only one and elevenpence change for half-a-sovereign, and then the half-sovereign is on its way back to Furnival, and the fare has started on his twenty-three minutes' walk, with some of the change in his pocket. But he is not going to do it without idling, it seems.

Jim heard him approach the well-gap, and come to a stand. Then he turned up the brick pathway. Now, who was this chap going to be?

"Well, Jim Coupland! Where's Lizarann? I've come to pay her a visit. And you too!"

Jim knew Challis again the moment he heard his voice close. "Aha!" he exclaimed joyfully. "You're the gentleman. Came with the Master nigh a month agone!" And the cordiality of Blind Samson's big right hand was all the greater that it was welcoming, not only a friend, but what was in a sense the dawn of Lizarann. For this gentleman, whose name had slipped Jim's memory, would never have asked for her on insufficient grounds. In a flash of his mind, Jim had inferred that his visitor, on his way to the Rectory, had decided--from information received--that his lassie, due there the day before, would be, or might be, already with her father at the Abbey Well. A very reasonable view! It was almost an assurance that his child had arrived, that this gentleman should speak of her thus.

Challis left his hand in Jim's, while he said, "But where's the kid?"

Said Jim, with confidence, "If you'd come another half-hour later, I lay you'd have found her, back with her Daddy. Six martal weeks she's been away. But you'll find her at the Master's, I take it, or meet on the road."

Challis's voice hung fire a little as he answered, "I'm not on my way to the Rectory now. I shall have to pay my respects to Miss Coupland later. Jolly glad she's back, though, Jim, for your sake! How's she coming on? All the better for the sea, I'll answer for it." Jim was not the one to be behindhand in optimism. "Done her a warld o' good, I'm told! Only, ye see, I haven't set eyes on the Master this week past, and I have to put my dependence on the two little ladies, seeing the old mother at the cottage has gone to London."

At this point Jim saw his way to still further flattering his certainty of Lizarann's return by sending a message about her to his sister, so he let Aunt Stingy into the conversation provisionally. He worded a _couleur de rose_ account of his invalid, subject to reserves, and asked Challis to be the bearer of it.

"What's that, Jim?... Ah, to be sure; I had forgotten that. Mrs. Steptoe's your sister. Yes--I'll tell her." His manner was unsettled, tense, _exalté_, but not that of a man preoccupied with any but pleasant thoughts. Jim felt that some inquiry after this relative of his would not be out of place. He hoped she was giving satisfaction to "the mistress," and half suggested that her cooking was what he was asking about. His shrewd hearing detected discomfort in Challis's reply: "Oh aye--yes! Very good wholesome cooking!" Had he touched a sore subject? He decided that he had, and was sorry when the gentleman said abruptly: "That's all right enough. Can't stop now! Got to get to the Park Gate by nine. How far do you make it out to the Park Gate?" Jim gave what information he had to give; but Challis remembered quite enough of the ground to know that the fly-driver's estimate was a low one; in fact, it had been the interest of the latter to minimize the distance, in order to get away as soon as he could. "I shall have to look alive," said Challis. He shook Jim's hand cordially, and started.

In the accident of passing words it had so chanced that if either of these two men had been asked--how came he to know that Lizarann had returned to the Rectory?--he would have referred to the other as an authority. Challis's confidence that he would find Lizarann at the Well was only the echo of some words of the Rector's three weeks previously, fixing the date of her return; while Jim's assurance that she was at the Rectory was based on Challis's way of taking her presence at the Well for granted. Certainly when they parted, each had an image in his mind of the invalid back again, much improved, and looking forward to her meeting with her Daddy.

Such serene unconsciousness of the truth as Jim's was at this moment strikes harshly on one's sense of probability; but, probable or no, it was actual. Jim had not experienced such happiness since his child left him to live, during her absence, on hopes of her return in renewed health. She was coming now; not a doubt of it! She was actually near at hand; so near that, with a guide, he could almost have walked the distance on his wooden leg. She was coming....

Then a gust of disbelief that anything so good could be his, so soon, seized on his faculties, and made his judgment dizzy. He must be silent and patient, and wait.

But with this added assurance of Lizarann, pending or near at hand, Time got a quality of tediousness. The half-hour that followed on Challis's invasion seemed longer than all the previous half-hours of the morning added together. Till then Jim had been making all allowance for the chance that Lizarann was not due till to-morrow, or even next day. The question was an open one. Challis had managed to leave behind him an implication that she had arrived. How the sluggard minutes would crawl now, till she came! Well--patience!

Why was the gentleman going to the Park, not the Rectory? Pending Lizarann, Jim thought it worth while to wonder at this; or, indeed, at any other trifle that would hold his mind for a moment, and help his patience. He had hardly noticed Challis's _distrait_ manner at the time, but it came back to him now. Yes--why was the gentleman not going to the Rectory? Of course, he was only known to him as a guest there; might have been a perfect stranger at the Hall, for anything that appeared to the contrary. But it was the way he had disclaimed the Rectory that clashed with Jim's slight knowledge of him. "Not on his way" there now! "However, it was no concern of Jim's, anyhow! Think of Lizarann again--only Lizarann!"

His mind ran back to the old match-selling days in Bladen Street. There was the terrible January night again, no darker than his day was now, for all he felt St. Augustin's sun on his hands and face; for all he knew at a guess how the white road would have glared on the eyes he had lost, even as his last memory of daylight blazed on them still, leagues away in Africa. There was he again!--a spot in the darkness that was his lot for ever; a something made of sick torture, borne in a litter; and then the voice of his little lass, and the touch of her lips as he lay.... Well!--at least he had a man's heart in him then, and, crushed as he was, made light of his agony, to spare her. That was a consolation to him now.

His lot for ever! His lot, that is, so long as he himself should live to bear it. His lot, till what was left of what was once a man was laid by what once was Dolly, in a grave! Then touch and hearing would be gone too, and he and Dolly alike forgotten in the black void of the time to come.... What did _he_ matter? He flung the unconsidered unit, himself, aside, in view of a new terror that came suddenly--an image of his little lass without her Daddy. That was too much pain to bear. To think of the lassie left alone!

But why think of it at all, yet awhile? Might not he see her again within the hour? Was it not a chance that even now she was on her way, coming----coming?...

What was that? A dog's bark he knew quite well--the Rector's dog--somewhere over by the Rifle Butts. Near a mile off--yes!--but clear to the sharpened hearing of a blind man. Equally clear to his dog too, asleep in the sun, and calling for prompt action. The little tyke started up, barking in reply, and scoured away to make his presence felt elsewhere. Jim's thought stopped, that he might listen for a distant step on the road, a step he knew well. A great swinging stride unlike any other man's in those parts--how mistake it? But another quarter of an hour must pass before either could have articulate speech of the other, mere shouting apart. Jim was just on the very verge of his release from suspense, and could not bear to wait a moment longer, patience or no! He started along the paved way that led to the road, guiding himself, as he could well do, by touching the curb with his stick. It was all plain sailing to him, so far, and no guide was needed.

He stood and listened, waiting for the approaching footsteps. He could hear his own little deserter's bark, no great distance down the road; and through it, at intervals, the bark of the other dog, coming slowly nearer. But otherwise, nothing outside the sum of noises he could know the day by from the night, a monotone with here and there a special sound of beast or bird or insect. Yes!--there was another sound, some way off still; the motor-car that had passed the cottage last night, coming from the Hall. Jim knew its special hoot of old; could have sworn to it among a dozen others.

An old turf-cutter was near enough to see Jim at this moment, and, after, told what he saw. This man was some way off, trimming the roadside turf; but his eyes were good, though he was deaf as any post.

He saw Jim--so his tale ran--standing where the path began, close against the road. He seemed to be listening for something. Quite unexpectedly he saw him throw up his arms as though surprised or delighted; but of this the old man, hearing nothing, could not speak with certainty. He had somehow an impression, though, that Jim was "raising a great shouting." Then he saw him step suddenly into the road, and limp with his stick, but with wonderful activity, towards the twist in its course that it makes round the clump of thorn-trees that shuts in the Abbey Well. The old turf-cutter saw him last just as he turned that corner.

Immediately after, a motor-car, going at a mad speed, tore along the road from the Park. Whether this car was sounding its trumpet the deaf man could not say. All he knew was that it followed without slacking down round the corner Jim had been last seen at. It vanished in a thick cloud of its own dust. The deaf man "misdoubted something had gone wrong," not from any noise, of course, but because he "watched along the road" for the dust-cloud, and none came. He suspected nothing, however, beyond some hitch in the car's working-gear, until some ten minutes later, when the motor came back, slowly--or relatively slowly. Then he saw that it contained a young lady, who looked, he said, "all mazed and staring like"; a gentleman, who lay back with blood running down his face, and seemed "no ways better than dead," and the chauffeur. Then a little dog came barking down the road, and went after the motor-car. He could see it was barking. That was all he could tell. He laid his turf-spud aside, and went along the road to find Jim and learn what he could of the mishap.

* * * * *

Athelstan Taylor left the Rectory, with a heavy heart, shortly before nine o'clock. He knew he should find Jim at the Abbey Well, and he wanted to make sure the news should not reach him through any other channel. It would inevitably leak out now. He knew well how things of the kind will travel, contrary to all calculations.

It occurred to him just as he was starting that if he took his dog with him, Jim's prevision of something wrong, which he looked to as likely to make his task easier, would have time to mature before his arrival. Jim would hear the dog's bark, and recognize it, long before his own footsteps could reach his ears. He had not at first intended to have the animal with him, but he now went back and released him, and felt that the idea was a good one. He could cover the ground, going by the short-cut near the Rifle Butts, in less than half-an-hour. He might be hindered on the way, but at least he would be as quick as he could. No one should be beforehand with Jim, if he could help it.

The hindrances were few and slight. Two or three colloquies of as many minutes each, ending with apologies for their brevity, made up the total of delay. Twenty-five minutes may have passed since Challis left Jim to keep his appointment, when the Rector reached the Rifle Butts and took the path that goes across from them to the Abbey Well; it branches off from the path Lizarann and Joan followed to go to the cottage.

What ensued does not explain itself, unless it is made quite clear that the curve in the road round the Abbey Well was no mere kink, but a full curve, like the letter U. One side of this U looked towards the Hall, the other to the village; and beyond it the turning for Thanes Castle, along which the motor-car came last night. The point to keep in mind is that the entrance to the Abbey Well gave towards the Hall, not the village. Nevertheless, the Well was visible from the Rifle Butts through a gap in the trees, which grew thicker on each side of the curve of the road, concealing a portion of it very completely. It was into this the motor-car vanished from the eyes of the deaf turf-cutter.

Athelstan Taylor, half broken-hearted as he thought of the task before him, had a struggle with himself not to flinch from it, and slacken the speed that was bringing it so near. He could see, shortly after passing the Rifle Butts, the figure of Lizarann's Daddy, and could picture to himself his unsuspicious ignorance. How sick he felt! How glad he would be when it was over!

He saw Jim rise from his seat and make for the entrance, and conjectured that his own footstep was the cause. He saw him stop and wait when he reached the road, and then lost sight of the entry for a moment. But he thought he heard Jim shout, as he had heard him often shout before now, in answer to little Lizarann's call of "Pilot." When he next saw the entry there was no Jim.

He had to go only the length of the curve to get to the place where he saw Jim last. He was within five minutes of it now. Courage!

That was the motor-car from the Hall making that hideous noise. Louis Rossier, the chauffeur, going by himself, of course! He always broke out of bounds when alone, and that speed was something awful. The Felixthorpes must have stayed at Thanes. Bess had said they were there; and now M. Louis was going to fetch them. Would he never slacken down at that bend in the road? Apparently not. A terrible corner that, to whirl a motor round at sixty miles an hour! He could hear Jim's little dog bark in answer to his own, but he was still some minutes' walk from the road....

What was that cry? What were those cries, rather--cries of panic or of warning, with a woman's shriek above them? And what was that terrible cry in a voice he knew?--Jim's voice!

Then he was conscious, in spite of distance, of rapid, panic-stricken interchange of speech. Two voices, a man's and a woman's, mixed with the pulsations of the shut-off machinery of the car, checked in its course. Then of alternations of the sounds of the working-gear, which he knew meant the turning of the car in the narrow space. Then, as he reached the spot, the sound of its resumed movement, and its trumpet-signal again. When he arrived it was vanishing, but he took little heed of it or its contents. All his thought was for the man who lay, crushed and groaning, on the bare road in the sun. Would his message need to be given now?

"Twice over's soon told, Master, and there an end!" Those seemed to be Jim's words to the man who kneeled over him, not daring to touch him yet till he should know more. Should he examine him where he lay, or try at once to move him off the road?

"Oh, Jim--Jim Coupland--who has done this?" He raised the head that lay in the dust with cautious strength, fearing that any touch might only be so much more needless pain. But there was no appearance of flinching; and he raised him further yet, to rest against his knee; then carefully wiped the forehead, red with blood from a cut on the temple, but still there was no sign of flinching from his touch. "Can you bear to be lifted, Jim?... Say if I hurt you."

"Ah!--get me up out of the gangway. I'm a job for the doctor, I take it...." His voice became inaudible, but not before the word "Water!" had passed his lips. The old turf-cutter was coming slowly. If he could be raised and moved to a safe place by the roadside, for the moment, further help could be got. The Rector knew the old man would not hear if he spoke at his loudest, but he contrived to make him understand. Between them they raised poor Jim gently, and got him out of the blazing sun. His fortitude was great to utter no sound--or, was he injured to death, and half insensible? The Rector recalled what he had heard of him in that old accident, and thought the former.

No, he was not insensible! For when they had laid him on some soft bracken a little way off the road, and the old man had gone for assistance to the nearest cottage--for he himself did not dare to leave him--Jim tried again to speak.

"What, Jim? Say it again!" The Rector put his ear close to catch the words.

"Make the best of me, and let my lassie come!" He was wandering, clearly. But it was easy to see his meaning--that he wished to seem as little hurt as might be to his child, whom he imagined near at hand. Easier still when he added, "She came afore. Let her come now!"

"Lizarann is not here now, Jim." The speaker's voice half choked him. But why was this worse than the other telling would have been?

He was speaking again. It was only repetition. "She came afore. Let her come now!" His voice was all but inaudible, and the Rector's words had been lost upon him.

The deaf old man had done his errand well. The daughter of the little roadside inn, quicker of foot than he, came bringing water, and, what was needed too, brandy. Speech came again after a mouthful, swallowed with difficulty.

"Am I a bad sight, master? Let the lassie come! Never you fear for her! She's used to her Daddy." He spoke so naturally, all allowance made for pain resolutely kept at bay, that his only hearer--for the girl from the inn heard nothing--was quite at a loss. A bald truth was safe for the moment, though.

"Lizarann is not here, Jim. She cannot come to you now." The last words almost said why as well! Then both Jim's hearers heard what came quite distinctly from his lips: "What's got the lassie, Master, my lassie? I tell ye, I heard her sing out 'Pi-lot!' Aye!--once and again, 'Pi-lot!' when you was coming across the common yonder!"

But whether he himself heard the only reply Athelstan Taylor could force his lips to--"Not with me, Jim; Lizarann was not with me"--no one ever knew. For all he said was, "My little lass!" and never spoke again.

His shattered body was carried to old Margy's cottage, but the moment of death was hard to determine. All that came to light from the post-mortem examination was that the spine was injured beyond all hope of recovery, and that this was only one of several injuries, any of which might have caused death.

* * * * *

The windows of the ward at the Nursing Home at Chalk Cliff stand wide to allow the sweet air from the sea to come and go at will. All has been done that Death has left to do for Lizarann Coupland. Her end and its cause are certified by medical authority, and registered officially, and a little coffin has been ordered, in which the tiny white thing, like an image well carved in alabaster, that Adeline Fossett and her friend Miss Jane know is under that sheet on the bed, is to be interred shortly, as soon as its Daddy's wishes are known. They never will be, but neither lady knows that yet.

"Poor little darling!" said Miss Fossett. "Do you recollect, Jane, those very last words she said?"

"About the Pilot?"

"No, no--after that. I wasn't sure you heard. I had tried to tell her what ... what it was ... and I couldn't find words. But I fancy the little thing half understood, too. What she said was--quite clearly--'But who's a-going to tell my Daddy?'" It was so like herself. The speaker breaks down; but then, you see, she had taken Lizarann to her heart so thoroughly--was thinking she would never have another child she should be so fond of. Miss Jane is used to these things, and affects strength.

"I think it will be ready for the flowers now," she says, and removes that sheet. Yes, the handkerchief round the face may come away. The two ladies place flowers round the little alabaster head. It is the head, one would say, of a sweet little girl, and the mouth is not too large for beauty now, although that line of black is in the lips.

* * * * *

So it came to pass that neither Lizarann nor her Daddy lived to mourn the loss of the other. The child was never an orphan, and the father only childless an hour or so. And Lizarann never knew what his employment had been, but cherished to the last an untainted memory of those happy days when she led him home, blind but otherwise uninjured, from the honourable fulfilment of some mysterious public service. And yet, had she known, would she have thought it other than right? For, was it not Daddy?