Towards nine he went out on the pretext of seeing to a cow that had lately calved and was in a weakly state.

He gave the animal her food and clean litter, doing everything more clumsily than usual.

Then he went into the stable and groped about for a lantern that stood in the corner.
He found it, slipped through the farmyard into the lane, and then lit it out of sight of the house.
'It's bad ground top o' t' Downfall,' he said to himself, apologetically, as he guiltily opened the gate on to the moor--'varra bad ground.' Hanna shut her door that night neither at nine nor at ten.

For by the latter hour the master of the house was still absent, and nowhere to be found, in spite of repeated calls from the door and up the lane.

Hannah guessed where he had gone without much difficulty; but her guess only raised her wrath to a white heat.
Troublesome brats Sandy's children had always been--Louie more especially--but they had never perpetrated any such overt act of rebellion as this before, and the dour, tyrannical woman was filled with a kind of silent frenzy as she thought of her husband going out to welcome the wanderers.
'It's a quare kind o' fatted calf they'll get when _I_ lay hands on 'em,' she thought to herself as she stood at the front door, in the cold darkness, listening.
Meanwhile David and Louie, high up on the side of Kinder Scout, were speculating with a fearful joy as to what might be happening at the farm.