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Jasper looked bothered. Rose had such a way of driving people into a corner.

"There is nothing to tell. One of the rogues waited for me in the dark, and shot me in Stonehanger Lane. They just helped me into the house, and I spent the night there. Jack fetched me in the wagon yesterday morning."

She grew caressing, and a caressing mood never suited her. She was too thin, too hard about the eyes.

"Now, Jasper, you know——"

"What do you want me to tell you, Rose?"

"Why, everything. Dear lad, do you think it is nothing?"

"I'm not dead, or likely to be."

Their eyes met. There was something in Jasper's that repulsed the girl. She stiffened, and withdrew her hand.

"You know, Jasper, these things sometimes come to us from above. They are messages, divine warnings."

It was her doctrinal phase, and she had inherited it from her mother. Jasper glanced at her uneasily, and then stared at the window. He had never realised it so vividly before that Rose talked to him as though he belonged to her.

"It pulls a man up, and makes him think."