Half-an-hour passed and the mother lay still and listened. Dan was asleep by this time and breathing audibly, but there was no sound outside save the slipping of the water from the fixed wheel and the stamping of the horse in the stable. At last came the whistling of the train, and a few minutes later, Bessie's step on the "street" and then the rattling of the latch of the kitchen door.
Mrs. Collister tried to slip out of bed without awakening Dan, but her sciatica had made her limbs stiff and she knocked over the candlestick that stood on a chair beside her. This awakened her husband, and hearing the noise downstairs, he rolled out of bed, saying, in a threatening voice,
"Lie thou there—I'll settle her."
He went out to the stairhead, slamming the bedroom door behind him, threw up the sash of a window on the landing, and shouted into the darkness:
"Who's there?"
"Me, of course," cried Bessie.
A fierce altercation followed, in which Dan's voice was harsh and coarse, and Bessie's shrill with anger.
"Then find your bed where you've found your company," shouted Dan. And shutting down the window with a crash he returned to the bedroom.
The mother heard Bessie going off, and the fading sound of the girl's footsteps tore her terribly. But after a few minutes more Dan was making noise in his nostrils again and she got up and crept downstairs to the kitchen (where the dull red of the dying turf left just enough light to see by), slid the bolts back noiselessly, opened the door and called in a whisper:
"Bessie!"