“John! Oh, John!” she cried. “I’ve been so worried about you. I-I thought you were lying out hurt.”

She saw his slim form beside the greater bulk of the horse, halted when the animal moved between them, shaking itself, to trot to the trough beside the windmill. Then she was clinging to her son, and he was saying, the school-given accent still in evidence: “I’m all right, mother. I wanted to get the sheep away from the Channels. What a rain, dear! We must have had an inch already. Let’s hope it’ll rain six inches and fill the lake.”

A dull tattoo of hoofs preceded the arrival of Jimmy Partner who ground his feet before his horse could stop. Quick fingers began their work of removing the saddle.

“I told Nero about the message at Black Gate,” he said.

“Oh!” responded John Gordon a trifle vaguely, then hastened to add: “Oh, the message! Yes, that’s right, Jimmy. The tribe will start off for Deep Well first thing in the morning. Old Sarah is due to pass out. She must be the oldest lubra of the Kalchut. Now hurry along and get washed and change those clothes. Have you got clean shirt and vest and pants?”

“Too right, Johnny Boss.”

Mother and son began the walk across to the house, marked in the void by the light in the kitchen-living-room.

“I’m sorry we’re so late,” John Gordon said, slipping an arm about the gaunt figure. “Didn’t think this rain was coming when we left this morning, and I would have worried all night had I left the sheep on the Channel country.”

“But I’ve been so anxious, dear, so terribly anxious,” she complained. “I couldn’t help thinking of that night twelve years ago.”

The arm about her increased its pressure.

“I know,” he said, tenderly.