"Wilt thou not sit up, Bessie, while I make thy bed for thee?"
Bessie started and then stammered: "Oh, no! I mean .... it will do in the morning."
The old woman looked down at her with eyes which seemed to say, "Can thou not trust thy mother, girl?" But she only sighed and went off to bed.
Somewhere in the early morning (Dan having gone to bed also) Bessie got up to make ready. She found herself very weak, and it took her a long time to dress. When she was about to put on her shoes she remembered that they were new and told herself they would creak as she went downstairs, so she decided to go barefoot again.
Having finished her dressing she took from under the bed-clothes what she had hidden there, and began to wrap it in a large silk scarf. It was the scarf she had worn in the storm—a present from Alick; with "Bessie" stamped on one corner.
Seeing her name at the last moment, she tore a strip of the scarf away, and threw it aside (intending to destroy it in the morning), opened her door, listened for an instant and then crept downstairs and out of the house.
The night was chill and the ground struck cold into her body. It was very dark, for the moon and stars had gone out, and there was no light anywhere except the dull red of the gorse fires on the mountains, which had sunk so low as to look like a dying eye. But Bessie could have found her way blindfolded.
Carrying her burden she crossed the wooden bridge and reached the path that went up the glen. Just as she did so she heard the sound of singing, of laughter and of carriage-wheels on the high road. A company of jolly girls and boys were driving home after one of their Bachelor Balls in a neighbouring parish. That cut deep, but Bessie thought of Alick and the wound passed away. She would return to him in a few days; they would be married soon, and then she, too, would be glad and happy.
How dark it was under the trees, though! She had left it late. The dawn was near, for the first birds were beginning to call.
"It must be here," she thought, and she slipped down from the path to the bed of the glen.