The boy let drop the window-curtain, and came across to her bed.

“Are you awake?” he whispered.  “Get up and dress—­we can do it easily.”

“Do what?”

“There’s a tank just under the window—­with a slate cover:  we can lower ourselves down to it from the sill, and after that it’s not six feet to the ground.”

“What’s up with you?” She raised herself, and sat rubbing her eyes.  “Oh, get yer clothes off an’ go back to bed!  Walkin’ in yer sleep you must be.”

“If you won’t come with me, I’m going alone.”

“Eh?” She stared at him across the moon-ray, for he had gone back to the window and lifted the curtain again.  “But where in the world?”

“To Holmness.”

“’Olmness? . . .  It’s crazed you are.”

“I am not crazed at all.  It’s all quite easy, I tell you—­easy and simple.  They’ve left the boat afloat—­I’ve found out how to get to her—­and the night is as still as can be. . . .  Are you coming?”

“You’ll be drowned, I tell you—­drowned or lost, for sure—­”

“Are you coming?”

He did not reason with her, or she would have resisted.  He spoke very calmly, and for the first time she felt his will mastering hers.  One thing was certain—­she could not let him go alone. . . .  She threw back the bedclothes, slipped out, and began to dress, protesting all the while against the folly of it.

To reach the ground was mere child’s-play, as he had promised.  From the broad window-ledge to the slate tank was an easy drop, and from the tank they lowered themselves to a gravelled pathway that led around this gable of the house.  They made the least possible noise, for fear of awakening the farm-dogs; but these slept in an out-house of the great farmyard, which lay on the far side of the building.  Here the moon shone into a diminutive garden with box-bordered flower-beds, and half a dozen bee-skips in row against a hedge of privet, and at the end of the gravelled walk a white gate glimmering.

Arthur Miles tip-toed to the gate, lifted its latch very cautiously, and held it aside for Tilda to pass.  They were free.

“Of all the madness!” she muttered as they made for the coombe.

The boy did not answer.  He knew the way pretty well, for this was their fourth journey.  But the moonlight did not reach, save here and there, the hollows through which the path wound, and each step had to be carefully picked.

“Look ’ere,” she essayed again after a while, “I won’t say but this is a lark, if on’y you’ll put that nonsense about ’Olmness out of yer mind.  We can go down to the cottage an’ make believe it’s yer ancesteral ’ome—­”

“Wh’st!” he commanded sharply, under his breath.

She listened.  Above the murmur of the stream her ears caught a soft pattering sound somewhere in the darkness behind.

“What is it?” She caught at his arm.