She followed his glance, and shivered at that look of earth and heaven which they called in Marshcotes the scowl of God. To the west, whence the wind was gathering strength, the sky was a dull, blue-green; from the east a tight-drawn curtain of cloud moved nearer to the sun, which shone with dimmed light and heat unbearable. Light drifts of cloud trailed like brown smoke between earth and sky. The whole wide land was still, save for quick breaths of suffocation which stirred the summer dust and whipped up the leaves untimely fallen.
"I am frightened, Sexton. Let us go," murmured Mistress Wayne.
"All day I've watched it creeping up," said Witherlee, regarding with rapt eyes the eastern sky. "There's storms as come quick, an' go as lightly—but this un hes nursed its rage a whole long day, an' when it bursts, 'twill be like Heaven tumbling into Hell-pit fire. Ay, I've seen one sich storm, an' it bred bloodshed. See ye, Mistress, th' first rain-drops fall! An' th' streams that are dry this minute 'ull race bank-top high afore an hour is spent. An' them as seeks for tokens need seek no farther."
Beyond the kirkyard hedge a horseman passed, fast riding at the trot.
"What did I tell ye!" cried the Sexton. "Th' storm an' th' Lean Man ride together, an' th' streams that war empty shall be filled."
"He must be hastening from the rain. See, Sexton, he rides as if pursued."
Witherlee remembered Nanny's meeting with Nicholas. "It may be th' rain he's hastening fro'—or it may be summat 'at ye've heard whining, Mistress, when dusk is settling over Barguest Lane," he said.
For a while he stood there, nursing his visions and heedless of the gathering drops; then, seeing how Mistress Wayne was shivering, he came back to workaday matters.
"Come ye wi' me, Mistress," he cried. "Th' drops is falling like crown-pieces.—Good sakes, there's another horseman skifting out of th' wet, or intul 't; who mud it be, like?"
Shameless Wayne, riding up the field-side that ran from the Bull tavern to the moor, looked over and saw his step-mother standing beside the Sexton in the kirkyard.