"Have you spent half a summer up here without learning to respect the back-block sun? You mustn't think of going to sleep in it again. It's as much as your life is worth."
"Which is very little," murmured Miss Winfrey, letting some sand slip through her fingers, as if symbolically.
"Look here!" said Ferrers. "I shall be out all day, seeing to the sheep and riding the boundaries. There's a room at the back of my hut which the boss and those young fellows use whenever they stay there. They keep some blankets in it, but I have the key. The coach doesn't go till eight o'clock to-night. Why not lie down there till five or six?"
"I'm not a fool in everything," said the girl at length. "I'll do that."
"Not at a walk. Besides, I'll lead him. Recollect you've nine miles before you this evening."
She gave in. The room proved comfortable. She fell asleep to the sound of the horse's canter, lost in a few strides in the sand, but continuous in her brain. And this time she slept for many hours.
It was a heavy, dreamless sleep, from which she at last awoke refreshed, but entirely nonplussed as to her whereabouts. The room was very small and hot. It was also remarkably silent, but for the occasional crackling of the galvanised roof; and rather dark, but for the holes which riddled that roof like stars, letting in so many sunbeams as thin as canes. Miss Winfrey held her watch in one of them, but it had stopped for want of winding. Then she opened the door, and the blazing sun was no higher in the west than it had been in the east when last she saw it.
On a narrow bench outside her door stood a tin basin, with a bit of soap in it, cut fresh from the bar; a coarse but clean towel; and a bucket of water underneath. The girl crept back into the room, and knelt in prayer before using these things. In the forenoon none of them had been there.
Going round presently to the front of the hut, the first thing she saw was the stockrider's boots, with the spurs on them, standing just outside the door; within there was a merry glare, and Wilfrid Ferrers cooking more chops in his stocking soles before a splendid fire.
"Well!" she exclaimed in the doorway, for she could not help it.
"Awake at last!" he cried, turning a face ruddy from the fire. "You've had your eight hours. It's nearly five o'clock."