Randal took always the end bunk in the whare, no matter how many lay to his choice. For the end bunk headed to the sou’west and the fierce sleet and rain that sifted through unfound cracks and thundered on the wall. And Randal did not tell that through one crack whereof he alone knew showed a faint fleck of light beyond the pine avenue which had its beginning in Effie Scannell’s window. On that light he had fed love and desire and hope for a year past. But he would not do it any more.
At the gully-top he turned and looked back. A cold wind soughed restlessly in the dead branches and the flax, striking the flames to passing gleams, and spinning little whirls of smoke to the empty sky. Pale afterglow held up the dark to show the gathering clouds rushing down wind, and Randal dropped his head, tramping on unspeaking.
Buck, perched on the black colt, talked in undertone to his team, and Mogger whistled fitfully until the fury of pelting rain caught them in the length of the sullen miles. Randal turned up his collar and cared not though the clay underfoot squelched to mud and to running water; but Mogger spoke unkindly to the black thing that rose up at the wool-shed gate.
“Git out of the tide-way, yer lumpin’ galloot! Think we come home ter stan’ here an’ watch you?”
