“You must tell your aunt.”

“I can’t-they’re in the one room together, she and Uncle. If you’ll let me stay-”

“Of course you can stay. Get your things off and get into bed! It’s big enough for half a dozen.”

Eily caught her breath.

“I didn’t mean that-or to trouble you-only to stay in the room. He said to ask you.”

Jane took her up quickly.

“He? Who?”

“It was John, Miss Heron-John Higgins.”

“When?”

“Miss Heron, you’ll not tell? There’s no harm, but you’ll not tell? There’s once in a while he’ll come out here and go by whistling to let me know he’s there. It’s a hymn tune he whistles-Greenland’s Icy Mountains-and I’ll look out of my window, and he’ll say, ‘Are you all right, Eily?’ and I’ll say, ‘Yes.’ But tonight-oh dear, he was in a way!”

“Why?”

Eily shrank.

“You know what happened up here tonight with that Luke. I went down and I told my Aunt Annie. Mrs. Bridling that comes in to help when we’re busy, she’d finished up and gone home, and I was putting away the silver. I didn’t know there was anyone there. But Mrs. Bridling came back. She’d left her scarf, and she came back for it, and she heard what I said when I thought it was just Aunt Annie and me, the two of us alone.”

“How do you know?”

Eily sat down on the edge of the bed. It was just as if she couldn’t hold herself up any more. There seemed to be the weight of the world on her. She went on telling Jane about Mrs. Bridling.

“She went right back to Cliff and saw to Mr. Bridling-he’s in his bed and can’t get out of it. Then she began to think about what she’d heard me tell Aunt Annie, and when she’d thought about it for a bit she went along next door and told John Higgins, and John came out here right away. I’ve never seen him in such a taking.”

“I don’t wonder. Eily, why don’t you marry him like he wants you to? He does, doesn’t he?”

Eily looked at her, a long mournful look.

“And have his blood on me the way Luke said?” She shook her head. “I’d rather jump off the cliff-I told him so tonight.”

“And what did he say to that?”

Eily’s voice went lower still.

“He said I’d lose my soul and go to hell, and he said he’d come after me-there or anywhere. And he said, ‘God forgive me, but it’s true.’ I’ve never seen him like it before. What’s the matter with men, Miss Heron, to get worked up about a girl the way they do? There’s Al, and Luke, and even John-what gets into them at all?”

Jane bit her lip. She wanted to laugh, and she wanted to cry. She remembered Jeremy kissing her that hard way.

Eily went on in her pretty grieving voice.

“He wanted me to come out by the side door. He said he’d take me out to Mrs. Bridling and we could be married in three days. And I said I couldn’t leave Aunt Annie. You’d never think he’d carry on the way he did. I just said no, and no, and no, and at the last of it he said would I give my solemn promise I’d go along to your room and ask you to let me stay, and he’d come out in the morning and talk to Uncle, so I said I would-” Her voice trailed away.

Eily slipped in on the far side of the big bed and felt warmth and safety close round her. She said, “Thank you, Miss Heron,” on a soft breath, and heard a laugh from the neighbouring pillow.

“Oh, drop the Miss Heron! We’ll be cousins when you marry John Higgins.”

Jane lay there thinking how odd it all was. She knew the moment when Eily fell asleep, but she herself was broad awake. If you scare your first sleep away, it doesn’t readily come back. Her mind went over all the things that had happened since they came to the Catherine-Wheel-the old house, the dark passage to the shore, Al Miller’s drunken laugh, Eily, Luke White nursing a bleeding hand, Jeremy kissing her in the little room half way down the stairs. They came back as thoughts, but the thoughts changed to pictures, and the pictures went with her over the edge of sleep. In the last of them she was out of bed standing at the door of the room. The door was open. She looked into the passage, and it was empty-empty and dark. But there was a light at the end where the stair went down. She went along as far as the landing and looked over the stair. The door of the little room half way down was open and someone was coming out. It was Jeremy. That is what she thought when she saw him. And then she wasn’t sure. His hair was much longer, and he looked so ill. He had on a big loose coat and a high dark stock. His hands were pressed hard against his side, the blood ran between his fingers. It wasn’t Jeremy- it couldn’t be Jeremy. He came out of the room and looked up at her standing there. She knew that he was going to die. She screamed, and the scream waked her.

She was sitting up in the big bed in the dark with her hand at her throat and the scream ringing in her ears. For a moment the dream hung there-Jeremy looking up at her, and the blood running down-and the scream. It was her own scream. Or was it? The dream went back into the place from which it had come, and she wasn’t sure. She remembered Eily. If she had screamed like that, why hadn’t Eily waked?

She stretched out a hand across the bed to feel for Eily, and she wasn’t there. From the time of her waking to that time was a matter of seconds. It takes too long to tell. To live through, it had taken no longer than to lift a hand and let it fall again. In the moment she knew Eily wasn’t there she heard the scream again. It came from somewhere in the house.

Jane was at the door before she knew how she had got there. The passage stretched away dark to the landing-dark and empty. It was just like her dream, except that in her dream she hadn’t known whether it was hot or cold, and now she was so cold that she could hardly get her breath. Her heart thumped and her breath caught in her throat. She must have picked up her dressing-gown, because she had it clutched up against her. She must have caught it up from the foot of the bed without thinking what she did. She huddled it about her shoulders, and heard the house wake round her. A bed-spring creaked, doors opened. Miss Silver came out of her room fastening the cord of her crimson dressing-gown.

Jane ran past her to the head of the stairs and halted. It was just as if she had gone back again into her dream, because the door of the little room half way down was open and Jeremy was coming out. Terror went over her like a cold breath. And then it was gone, and the dream with it. This was Jeremy, very much alive and on the spot, in blue and white pyjamas, with his hair standing on end.

Jane ran down the half flight and caught his arm. She said, “Jeremy!”-or she began saying it and then stuck. With her lips parted and half his name frozen on them, she looked down into the hall. There were three people there. One of them lay sprawling in the middle of the floor. He lay on his face as if he had tripped on the bottom step and pitched forward with his arms spread wide. There was a handkerchief twisted round his left hand. He was in his stocking feet, but he wore dark trousers and a grey linen coat. The rough horn handle of a knife stuck up under his left shoulder. The yellow light of the hanging lamp showed all the grey linen on that side horribly stained. The lamp hung on three brass chains and it had been turned low, but it showed Luke White lying there dead with a knife in his back.

It might have been Florence Duke who had screamed. She stood just past the newel of the stair where the passage went on to the baize door. She was dressed as she had been at dinner. The scarlet dress with its flaring pink and green pattern gave her a most ghastly look. The old make-up put on hours ago stood out from the pallor of her face with shocking effect. She held her hands a little away from her and stared at them. The fingers were red.