Roger moved silently to the door, opened it, and listened. There was still the sound of laughter from the hall: the otter's paw continued to cause diversion. He closed the door again.

"Whether Sir William believes it or not I cannot say," he said, "but talk of your illness there has been, and for some months. That is why I have come, my lady, to prove it a lie for myself, and now I know it to be so."

Isolda, with the squirrel in her arms, might have been her small daughter Margaret as she looked at the steward steadily, weighing in the balance his trustworthiness.

"I did not like you once," she said. "You had too shrewd an eye, casting about you for your own advantage, and, because it suited you to serve a woman rather than a man, you let my cousin Sir Henry Champernoune die.

"My lady," said Roger, "he was mortally sick. He would have died anyway within a few weeks."

"Perhaps, but the way he went showed undue haste. It taught me one thing — to beware of potions brewed by a French monk. Sir Oliver will seek to rid himself of me by other methods, a dagger's thrust or strangulation. He won't wait for nature to put an end to me." She dropped the squirrel on the floor and, moving to the window, looked out once more at the still falling snow. "Before he does," she said, "I'll rather take myself outdoors and perish. With the country covered as it is today I'd freeze the sooner. How about it, Roger? Carry me in a sack upon your back and cast me somewhere at the cliff's edge? I'd thank you for it."

She meant it as a joke, if somewhat twisted, but crossing to the window beside her he stared up at the pall of sky and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle.

"It could be done, my lady," he said, "if you had the courage."

"I have the courage if you have the means," she replied. They stared at one another, an idea suddenly taking root in both their minds, and she said swiftly, "If I went from here, and thence to my brother's at Bere, Sir Oliver would not dare to follow me, for he could never sustain his lies about my sick mind. But in this weather the roads would be impassable. I could not reach Devon."

"Not immediately," he said, "but once the roads are fit it could be done."

"Where would you hide me?" she asked. "He has only to cross the valley to search the Champernoune demesne above Treesmill."

"Let him do so," answered Roger. "He would find it barred and empty, with my lady at Trelawn. There are other hiding-places, if you cared to trust yourself to me."

"Such as where?"

"My own house, Kylmerth. Robbie is there, and my sister Bess. It's nothing but a rough farm, but you are welcome to it, until the weather mends."

She said nothing for a moment, and I could see, by the expression in her eyes, that she still had some lingering doubt of his intent.

"It's a question of choice," she said. "To stay here a prisoner, at the mercy of my husband's whim, who can hardly wait to rid himself of a wife who is a lasting reproach, and an encumbrance too, or throw myself on your hospitality, which you may deny when it pleases you to do so."

"It will not please me," he answered, "nor will it ever be denied, until you say the word yourself."

She looked out once again at the falling snow and the slowly darkening sky, which foretold not only worsening weather to come but the approach of evening and all the hazards of a winter's night.

"I am ready," she said, and throwing open a chest against the wall drew out a hooded cloak, a woollen kirtle, and a pair of leather shoes that must surely never have seen service out of doors except thrust into a covering bag when she rode side-saddle. kirtleMy own daughter Joanna, who overtops me now, climbed from this same window a week ago," she said, "after a wager with Margaret that she had grown too fat. I am thin enough, in all conscience. What do you say? Do I lack spirit now?"

"You never lacked it, my lady," he answered, "only the spur to prick you to endeavour. You know the wood below your pasture-land?"

"I should," she said. "I rode in it most days when I was free to do so."

"Then lock your door, after I have left the room, climb from the window, and make your way to it. I will see that the track is deserted and the household all within, and will tell Sir Oliver that you dismissed me and wish to be alone."

"And the children? Joanna will be aping Sybell, as she has done continually these past weeks, but Margaret…" she paused, her courage ebbing. "Once I lose Margaret, there is nothing left."

"Only your will to live," he said. "If you keep that, you keep all things. And your children too."

"Go quickly", she said, "before I change my mind."

As we left the room I heard her lock the door, and looking at Roger I wondered if he knew what he had done, urging her to risk her life and her future in an escapade that must surely fail. The house had grown silent. We walked along the passage to the hall and found it empty, except for the two children and the dogs. Joanna was pirouetting before the looking-glass, her long hair dressed in braids with a ribbon threaded through it which had, a short time before, been on Sybell's head; while Margaret sat astride a bench, her father's conical hat upon her head and his long whip in her hand. She looked at Roger severely when he entered.

"Observe now," she said, "I am obliged to make do with a bench for a horse and borrowed plumage for equipment. I'll not remind you of your failings again, my master."

"Nor shall you have to," he told her. "I know my duty. Where is your father?"

"He's above," answered the child. "He cut his finger severing the otter's paw, and Sybell is dressing it for him."

"He'll not thank you to disturb him," said Joanna. "He likes to sleep before he dines, and Sybell sings to him. It makes him drop off the sooner and wake with better appetite. Or so he says."

"I do not doubt it," replied Roger. "In that event, please thank Sir Oliver for me and bid him goodnight. Your mother is tired and does not wish to see anyone. Perhaps you will tell him so?"

"I may," said Joanna, "if I remember."

"I'll tell him," said Margaret, "and wake him too, if he does not descend by six o'clock. Last night we dined at seven, and I can't abide late hours."

Roger wished them both goodnight and, opening the hall-door, stepped outside, closing it softly behind him. He stole round to the back of the house and listened. There were sounds coming from the kitchen quarters, but windows and doors were fastened tight, and the shutters barred. The hounds were yelping from outbuildings in the rear. It would be dark within half an hour or even less; already the copse below the field was dim, shrouded by the pall of snow, and the opposite hills were bleak and bare under the grey sky. The tracks we had made ascending to the house were almost blotted out by the fresh-fallen snow, but beside them were new prints, closer together, like those of a child who, hurrying for shelter, runs like a dancer upon her toes. Roger covered them with his own long stride, disturbing the ground, kicking the snow in front of him as he walked rapidly downhill towards the copse; and now if anyone should venture forth before darkness came they would see nothing but the tracks he had made himself, and those would be blotted too within the hour.

She was waiting for us by the entrance to the wood, carrying her pet squirrel, her cloak drawn close around her and her hood fastened under her chin. But her long gown, which she had tried to fasten up under the belted cloak, had slipped down again below her ankles and hung about her feet like a dripping valance. She was smiling, the smile her daughter Margaret would have worn had she too set forth on some adventure, with the promise of a pony at the end of it instead of a bleak unknown.

"I dressed my pillow in my night-attire", she said, "and heaped the covers over it. It may fool them for a while, should they break down the door."

"Give me your hand," he said. "Disregard your skirts and let them trail. Bess will find warm clothes for you at home."

She laughed and put her hand in his, and as she did so I felt as if it were in mine as well, and that the pair of us were lifting, dragging her through the fallen snow, and he was no longer a steward bound in the service of another woman and I a phantom from a later world, but both of us were men sharing a common purpose and a common love that neither of us, in his time or mine, would ever dare make plain.

When we came to the river and the rotten bridge that lay half-broken in mid-stream he said to her, "You must trust me once again and let me carry you across, as I would your daughter."

"But if you let me fall", she answered, "I will not clout you about the head, as Margaret would."

He laughed, and bore her safely to the other side, once more soaking himself nearly to the waist. We went on walking through the little line of stunted, shrouded trees, the silence all about us no longer ominous, as it had been when I walked alone, but hushed with a sort of magic, and a strange excitement too.

"The snow will be thicker in the valley around Treverran," he said, "and if Ric Treverran should see us he might not hold his tongue. Have you breath enough left to strike out into the open and climb the hill to the track above? Robbie awaits me there with the ponies. You shall choose which of us you please to ride behind. I am the more cautious."

"Then I choose Robbie," she said. "Tonight I bid farewell to caution, and for ever."

We turned left and began to climb the hill out of the valley, the river behind us, the snow reaching above the knees of my companions with every step, making progress laborious and slow.