“Has Rachel gone shopping to-night?” cried one of the women, pausing in her ironing.  “I did not know she was out.”

“She has been out all the evening,” was Nancy’s answer.  “I met her coming down the stairs, dressed.  And she could tell a story over it, too, for she said she was going to see her old father.”

But Master Dan Duff is not done with yet.  If that gentleman stood in awe of one earthly thing more than another, it was of the anger of his revered mother.  Mrs. Duff, in her maternal capacity, was rather free both with her hands and tongue.  Being sole head of her flock, for she was a widow, she deemed it best to rule with firmness, not to say severity; and her son Dan, awed by his own timid nature, tried hard to steer his course so as to avoid shoals and quicksands.  He crossed the yard, after the rebuff administered by Nancy, and passed out at the gate, where he stood still to revolve affairs.  His mother had imperatively ordered him to bring back the answer touching the intricate question of the light and the dark lavender prints; and Susan Peckaby—­one of the greatest idlers in all Deerham—­said she would wait in the shop until he came with it.  He stood softly whistling, his hands in his pockets, and balancing himself on his heels.

“I’ll get a basting, for sure,” soliloquised he.  “Mother’ll lose the sale of the gownd, and then she’ll say it’s my fault, and baste me for it.  What’s of her?  Why couldn’t she ha’ come home, as she said?”

He set his wits to work to divine what could have “gone of her”—­alluding, of course, to Rachel.  And a bright thought occurred to him—­really not an unnatural one—­that she had probably taken the other road home.  It was a longer round, through the fields, and there were stiles to climb, and gates to mount; which might account for the delay.  He arrived at the conclusion, though somewhat slow of drawing conclusions in general, that if he returned home that way, he should meet Rachel; and could then ask the question.

If he turned to his left hand—­standing as he did at the gate with his back to the back of the house—­he would regain the high road, whence he came.  Did he turn to the right, he would plunge into fields and lanes, and covered ways, and emerge at length, by a round, in the midst of the village, almost close to his own house.  It was a lonely way at night, and longer than the other, but Master Dan Duff regarded those as pleasant evils, in comparison with a “basting.”  He took his hands out of his pockets, brought down his feet to a level, and turned to it, whistling still.

It was a tolerably light night.  The moon was up, though not very high, and a few stars might be seen here and there in the blue canopy above.  Mr. Dan Duff proceeded on his way, not very quickly.  Some dim idea was penetrating his brain that the slower he walked, the better chance there might be of his meeting Rachel.