way.

Polly spoke with significance--nay, with heat. Laura was first startled,
then abashed.

"Do you think I made a ridiculous fuss?" she said humbly. "Perhaps I did.
But if--if--" she spoke slowly, drawing patterns on the wood of the stile
with her finger, "if I hadn't seen him drunk once--I suppose I shouldn't
have been afraid."

"Well, you'd no call to be afraid!" cried Polly. "Hubert vowed to me, as
he hadna had a drop of onything. And after all, he's a relation--an if
you'd walked wi him, you'd not ha had telegrams sent aboot you to make aw
th' coontry taak!"

"Telegrams!" Laura stared. "Oh, I know--Mr. Helbeck telegraphed to the
station-master--but it must have come after I'd left the station."

"Aye--an t' station-master sent word back to Mr. Helbeck! Perhaps you
doan't knaw onything aboot that!" exclaimed Polly triumphantly.

Laura turned rather pale.

"A telegram to Mr. Helbeck?"

Polly, surprised at so much ignorance, could not forego the sensation
that it offered her. She bit her lip, but the lip would speak. So the
story of the midnight telegram--as it had been told by that godly man Mr.
Cawston of Braeside to that other godly man Mr. Bayley, perpetual curate
of Browhead, and as by now it had gone all about the country-side--came