With a threatening gesture of his hand, he turned from the door, and Ferrier heard his heavy steps scrunching along the shingly path.

He was still sitting with his elbow upon his knee, considering how he should broach the matter to his daughter, when a soft hand was laid upon his, and looking up, he saw her standing beside him. One glance at her pale, frightened face showed him that she had heard what had passed.

“I could not help it,” she said, in answer to his look. “His voice rang through the house. Oh, father, father, what shall we do?”

“Don’t you scare yourself,” he answered, drawing her to him, and passing his broad, rough hand caressingly over her chestnut hair. “We’ll fix it up somehow or another. You don‘t find your fancy kind o’ lessening for this chap, do you?”

A sob and a squeeze of his hand were her only answer.

“No; of course not. I shouldn’t care to hear you say you did. He’s a likely lad, and he‘s a Christian, which is more than these folks here, in spite o’ all their praying and preaching. There’s a party starting for Nevada to-morrow, and I’ll manage to to send him a message letting him know the hole we are in. If I know anything o’ that young man, he’ll be back with a speed that would whip electro-telegraphs.”

Lucy laughed through her tears at her father’s description.

“When he comes, he will advise us for the best. But it is for you that I am frightened, dear. One hears — one hears such dreadful stories about those who oppose the Prophet; something terrible always happens to them.”

“But we haven’t opposed him yet,” her father answered. “It will be time to look out for squalls when we do. We have a clear month before us; at the end of that, I guess we had best shin out of Utah.”

“Leave Utah!”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“But the farm?”

“We will raise as much as we can in money, and let the rest go. To tell the truth, Lucy, it isn’t the first time I have thought of doing it. I don’t care about knuckling under to any man, as these folk do to their damed Prophet. I’m a freeborn American, and it‘s all new to me. Guess I’m too old to learn. If he comes browsing about this farm, he might chance to run up against a charge of buckshot travelling in the opposite direction.”

“But they won’t let us leave,” his daughter objected.

“Wait till Jefferson comes, and we’ll soon manage that. In the meantime, don’t you fret yourself, my dearie, and don‘t get your eyes swelled up, else he’ll be walking into me when he sees you. There’s nothing to be afeared about, and there‘s no danger at all.”

John Ferrier uttered these consoling remarks in a very confident tone, but she could not help observing that he paid unusual care to the fastening of the doors that night, and that he carefully cleaned and loaded the rusty old shot-gun which hung upon the wall of his bedroom.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘It will do very nicely. Thank you so much.’ Then she turned to Birkin, saying with a little gay movement: ‘Shall we do it now, Rupert?’

‘What about the others, they’ll be bored,’ he said reluctantly.

‘Do you mind?’ said Hermione, turning to Ursula and Gerald vaguely.

‘Not in the least,’ they replied.

‘Which room shall we do first?’ she said, turning again to Birkin, with the same gaiety, now she was going to DO something with him.

‘We’ll take them as they come,’ he said.

‘Should I be getting your teas ready, while you do that?’ said the labourer’s wife, also gay because SHE had something to do.

‘Would you?’ said Hermione, turning to her with the curious motion of intimacy that seemed to envelop the woman, draw her almost to Hermione’s breast, and which left the others standing apart. ‘I should be so glad. Where shall we have it?’

‘Where would you like it? Shall it be in here, or out on the grass?’

‘Where shall we have tea?’ sang Hermione to the company at large.

‘On the bank by the pond. And WE’LL carry the things up, if you’ll just get them ready, Mrs Salmon,’ said Birkin.

‘All right,’ said the pleased woman.

The party moved down the passage into the front room. It was empty, but clean and sunny. There was a window looking on to the tangled front garden.

‘This is the dining room,’ said Hermione. ‘We’ll measure it this way, Rupert—you go down there—’

‘Can’t I do it for you,’ said Gerald, coming to take the end of the tape.

‘No, thank you,’ cried Hermione, stooping to the ground in her bluish, brilliant foulard. It was a great joy to her to DO things, and to have the ordering of the job, with Birkin. He obeyed her subduedly. Ursula and Gerald looked on. It was a peculiarity of Hermione’s, that at every moment, she had one intimate, and turned all the rest of those present into onlookers. This raised her into a state of triumph.

They measured and discussed in the dining–room, and Hermione decided what the floor coverings must be. It sent her into a strange, convulsed anger, to be thwarted. Birkin always let her have her way, for the moment.

Then they moved across, through the hall, to the other front room, that was a little smaller than the first.

‘This is the study,’ said Hermione. ‘Rupert, I have a rug that I want you to have for here. Will you let me give it to you? Do—I want to give it you.’

‘What is it like?’ he asked ungraciously.

‘You haven’t seen it. It is chiefly rose red, then blue, a metallic, mid–blue, and a very soft dark blue. I think you would like it. Do you think you would?’

‘It sounds very nice,’ he replied. ‘What is it? Oriental? With a pile?’