After a little while she pulled herself up and wiped her eyes. Her head ached and Twelve Pound Wood was blurry with her tears. The sun struck down upon her back, baking, aching, mocking her with the thick yellow light in which the flies danced and the pollen hung. She wanted to creep into the shade.

But she must go home and save her face. It was dinner-time, and she must join her family with her old bravery, or they would suspect her humiliation. She rose to her feet, smoothed her dress, dusted off the bennet flowers and goose-foot burrs and the rub of pollen from the foxgloves, pushed back the straggling hair under her [177] hat, wiped her eyes again, and hoped the stains and blotches of her weeping would fade before she came to Worge. Then she set out for the opening of the wood. A man’s shadow lay across it, though she could not see him as he stood behind an ash-stump. Her breathing became shallow, and her heart thudded.... He had come back, to find her in her weakness—he was waiting for her.... No, it was not he, this smaller man, crouched like a fox against the stump.

“Jerry,” she cried, as she turned the elbow of the path, and met him face to face.

He was drunk; his eyes showed it with their gleam of bleared stars, his flushed cheeks and dark swelled veins, his hair hanging in a fringe over his brow, his mouth both fierce and loose.... He lurched towards her, and she just managed to brush past him, tumbling ungracefully over the hurdle that shut off the wood. He must have just come, for he had missed Seagrim—he might have stumbled over her as she lay and cried among the grasses.

She did not fall as she jumped the hurdle, but her ankle turned, making her stagger, and by the time she could right herself, Jerry stood before her, blocking the way to the Street. Then she saw for the first time that he had a hammer in his hand. Ivy gave a loud scream, and darted sideways, scrambling through the hedge into Twelve Pound field. Jerry was after her, without a word, no longer the furtive, padding animal she had despised, but the armed and terrible beast of prey that would kill and devour the foolhardy huntress who had roused him. She staggered up the field, too breathless to cry, but he drew even with her in a few strides, and grabbed her by the arm.

[178]

“Stop, Ivy, and say your prayers. I’m going to kill you.”

She could not speak, for her throat was dried up. Jerry’s eyes were more of a threat than his word. They were on fire—his skin was on fire—liquor and madness had set him alight; and in his hand was a hammer to hammer out her brains. She could neither cry to his mercy nor appeal to his reason—her physical powers were failing her, and both mercy and reason in him had been burnt up.

He gave her a violent push, and she fell on her knees.

“That&rs............