Ruthita was anxious to accompany me to the station.

“I don’t want you,” I told her. “Women always make a fuss over partings.”

“But not sensible women,” she protested, smiling. “Let me come. There’s a dear.”

“You’ll try to kiss me. You’ll make a grab at my neck just as the train is moving. I shall feel embarrassed. You’ll probably slip off the platform and get both your legs cut off. A nice memory to take with me to London! No, thank you.”

“But I won’t try to kiss you, and I won’t grab at your neck. I’ll be most careful about my legs. And I don’t think it’s nice of you to mention them so callously, Dante.”

“I always tell folks,” put in my grandmother, “that, if there wer’n’t no partin’s, there’d be no meetin’s. It’s just come and go in this life. If he don’t want you, my dear, don’t bother ’im.”

“But he does want me,” Ruthita persisted. “I’ve always seen him off. I used to run beside the trap till I was ready to drop when Uncle Obad drove him away to the Red House. He’s only making fun.”

“No, really, Ruthie, I’d much rather say good-by to you here in the shop.”

“If you’re going to catch the six-thirty-eight, you’ll have to run,” said my grandmother.

Ruthita looked hurt. She could not understand me. She felt that something was wrong. I picked up my bag. They hurriedly embraced and followed me out on to the pavement to watch me down the road. I looked back.

There they stood waving and crying after me, “Good-by. God bless you. Good-by.”

In passing the chemist’s shop I glanced in at the clock. It was five minutes faster than my watch. I turned into the High Street at something between a trot and a walk.

On entering the station I saw that the London train was ready to depart. The guard had the flag in his hand and the whistle to his lips, about to give the signal. The porters were banging the doors of the carriages. I had yet to buy my ticket. Rushing to the office, I pushed my money through. “’Fraid you won’t get the six-thirty-eight,” said the clerk.

I reached the barrier, where the collector was standing, just as the guard blew his whistle.

“Too late,” growled the collector, closing the gate in my face with all the impersonal incivility of a man whose action is supported by law.

“There’s a lady and a little girl on board,” I panted; “they’re expecting me.”

“Sorry,” said the man; “should ’ave got ’ere sooner.”

Just then the train began to move and I recognized the uselessness of further argument. As the tail of it vanished out of the station, the collector slid back the gate. Now that there was no danger of my disobeying him, he could afford to be human. “It’s h’orders, yer know, sir, else I wouldn’t ha’ done it.”

Friends who had been seeing their travelers off came laughing and chatting toward the barrier. As the crowd thinned, half way down the platform I caught sight of Vi. She was standing apart, with her hand-baggage scattered beside her in disorder. Dorrie was hanging to her skirts, looking up into her face, asking questions. Neither of them saw me.

“Hulloa!”

When I spoke to her, Vi started. Her eyes brimmed. There shone through her tears a doubtful gladness. “I thought—I thought you wer’n’t coming. I thought——”

“Vi dearest! Was that likely?”

Her fingers closed about my arm warningly as I called her dearest. She cast a scared look at Dorrie. “Not before her,” she whispered.

I shrugged my shoulders. The position was queer. For a man and a woman in our situation there was no readymade standard of conduct. I began to feel lost in the freedom we were making for ourselves. There were no landmarks. Even now we were beyond the conventional walls of right and wrong which divide society from the outcast. We were running away to seek our happiness—and we were taking Dorrie!

I began to explain hurriedly how I happened to miss the train.

“Ruthita wanted to come to the station. I lost time in dissuading her. When I got away, I discovered that my watch was slow by five minutes. And then to crown all, when I could have caught the train, the man at the gate...”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said generously. “How long before the next train starts?”

“About half-an-hour.”

“That’ll do nearly as well. My boxes have gone on, but I can claim them in London.”

“We don’t want to stand in this stuffy station,” I said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

She began to speak, and then stopped.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Shan’t—shan’t we be recognized?”

“Not if we go round the harbor. We shan’t be likely to meet anyone there who knows us.”

It was odd, this keeping up of respectable appearances to the last. Ruthita, Grandmother Cardover, Sir Charles, my father—all the world would know to-morrow. They would spread their hands before their faces and look shocked, and peek out at us through their fingers.

“No one ever thpeaks to me.” Dorrie was reproachfully calling our attention to her presence.

“We’ll both thpeak to you now,” I said. “Give me your hand, Dorrie.”

Leaving our baggage with a porter, we went out of the station to the harbor, which lay just across the station-yard. Vi manouvered herself to the other side of me, so that the child walked between us.

The heavy autumn dusk was falling. Lanterns were being run up the masts. The town shone hospitably with street-lamps. Groping their way round the pier-head came a part of the Scotch herring fleet. We could see how their prows danced and nodded by the way the light from their lamps lengthened and shortened across the water. Soon the ripple against the piles near to where we were standing quickened with the disturbance caused by their advance. Then we heard the creaking of ropes against blocks as sails were lowered.

Leaning against the wall of the quay we watched them, casting furtive glances now and then at the illumined face of the station-clock.

Dorrie asked questions, to which we returned indifferent answers. It had begun to dawn on her that I was going up to London with them. She construed our secretiveness to mean that our plot was for her special benefit; people only acted like that with her when they were concealing something pleasant. Her innocent curiosity embarrassed us.

Why were we going to London? she asked us. We had not dared to answer that question even to one another. For my part I tried not to hear her; she roused doubts—phantoms of future consequence. I pictured the scene of long ago, when Ransby was rather more than twenty years younger, and another man and woman had slipped away unnoticed, daring the world for their love’s preservation. Had they had these same thoughts—these hesitations and misgivings? Or had they gone out bravely to meet their destiny, reckless in their certainty of one another?

Behind us, as we bent above the water, rose the shuffling clamor of numberless feet. Up and down the harbor groups of fisher-girls were sauntering abreast, in rows of three and four. Now and then we caught phrases in broad Scotch dialect.. They had been brought down from their homes in the north, many hundreds of them, for the kippering. They paraded bareheaded, with rough woolen shawls across their shoulders, knitting as they walked. I was thankful for them; they distracted attention from ourselves. Vi and I said nothing to one another; our hearts were too full for small-talk. The child was a barrier between us.

A man halted near us. He had a heavy box on his back, covered with American-cloth. He set it down and became busy. In a short time he had lighted a lantern and hung it on a pole. He mounted a stool, from which he could command the crowd, raising the lamp aloft. Fisher-girls, still knitting, stopped in their sauntering and gathered round him. Several smacksmen and sailors, with pipes in their mouths, and hands deep in pockets, loitered up.

The man began to talk, at first at random, like a cheap-jack, trying to catch his hearers’ attention with a laugh. Then, when his audience was sufficiently interested, he unrolled a sheet upon which the words of a hymn were printed. He held it before him like a bill-board, so that all could see and the light fell on it. He sang the first verse himself in a strong, gusty baritone. One by one the crowd caught the air and joined in with him.

They sang four verses, each verse followed by a chorus. The man allowed the sheet to drop, and handed the pole with the lantern to a bystander.

His brows puckered. His eyes concentrated. His somewhat brutal jaw squared itself. His face had become impassioned and earnest all of a sudden. It had been coarse and rather stupid before; now a certain eagerness of purpose gave it sharpness. He began to talk with vehemence, making crude, forceful gestures, thrashing the air with his arms, bringing down his clenched right-fist into the open palm of his left-hand when a remark called for emphasis. His thick throat swelled above the red knotted handkerchief which took the place of a collar. He spoke with a kind of savage anger. He mauled his audience with brutal eloquence. His way of talking was ignorant. He was displeasing, yet compelling. There were fifteen minutes until the train started. I watched him with cynicism as a diversion from my thoughts.

“Brothers and sisters,” he shouted, “we are ’ere met in the sight of h’Almighty Gawd. It was ’im as brought us together. Yer didn’t know that when yer started out this starlit h’evenin’ for yer walk. It was ’im as sent me ’ere ter tell yer this evenin’ that the wages o’ sin is death. I know wot h’I’m a-saying of, for I was once a sinner. But blessed be Gawd, ’e ’as saved me and washed me white h’in ’is son’s precious blood. ’E can do that for you ter-night, an ’e sent me’ere ter tell yer.”

Some of the Cornish Methodists, in Ransby for the herring season, began to warm to the orator’s enthusiasm. They urged him to further fervor by ejaculating texts and crying, “Amen!”

“Blessed be ’is name!”

“Glory!” etc.

The man sank his voice from the roaring monotone in which he had started. “The wages o’ sin is death,” he repeated. “Oh, my friends, h’I speak as a dyin’ man to dyin’ men. Yer carn’t h’escape them wages nohow. The fool ’as said in ’is ’eart, ‘There ain’t no Gawd.’ ’Ave you said that? Wot’ll yer say when yer ’ave ter take the wages? Now yer say, ‘No one’s lookin’. They’ll never find out. H’everyone’s as bad as I h’am, only they doan’t let me know it. I’ll h’injoy myself. There ain’t no Gawd.’ I tells yer, my friends, yer wrong. ’E’s a-watchin’ yer now, lookin’ down from them blessed stars. ’E looks inter yer ’eart and sees the sin yer a-meditatin’ and a-planning. ’E knows the wages yer’ll ’ave ter take for it. ’E sees the conserquences. And the conserquences is death. Death ter self-respec’! Death ter ’uman h’affection! Death ter the woman and children yer love! Death ter ’ope and purity! Damnation ter yer soul! ’Ave yer thought o’ that? Death! Death! Death!”

He hissed the words, speaking slower and slower. His voice died away in an awestruck whisper. In the pause that followed, the quiet was broken by a shrill laugh. All heads turned. On the outskirts of the crowd stood “Lady Halloway.” She had evidently been drinking. A foolish smile played about her mouth. Her lips were swollen. She mimicked the evangelist in a hoarse, cracked voice, “Death! Death! Death!”

I signed to Vi. Going first, carrying Dorrie in my arms, I commenced to force a passage. We had become wedged against the wall. Our going caused a ripple of disturbance............