The Chiming Hour
- Brownie is back. Something like a loyal lapdog, he follows Briony as she goes outside at night.
- Certain that her communication with Brownie and Mucky Face and other swamp activities led to her stepmother's spinal injury, Briony refuses to listen or reply to Brownie. Despite being ignored and almost getting his nose caught in the garden gate (ouch), Brownie asks Briony (mistress as he calls her) why she doesn't write stories anymore—he says he is not asking for himself only, but for the Old Ones. Of course this makes Briony even more determined not to talk to him or write stories.
- Briony left Rose at home asleep. It is late night and everyone in the village is asleep.
- It is midnight, the chiming hour, and Briony is headed out to the fields. She mentions that this is a favorite time of the Old Ones, which makes it perhaps not the wisest time to go out alone, but Briony is one dangerous girl.
- Time for more witch trivia. What is a Dark Muse? She's one of the evilest of the Old Ones by Briony's opinion, and she preys on men, taking their souls and wits.
- Briony arrives at the pumping station and takes out three candles and a book of matches. She closes the windows, lights the candles, and closes the door behind her with the fires burning inside.
- While looking to see the explosion of the pump station, Briony is interrupted by Mucky Face, who also calls her mistress.
- Mucky Face tells Briony that he was sorry to strike her stepmother, but that the call came from a powerful, wicked Old One. When Briony tells him she was the one who called, he insists she was not the one.
- She reverts back to her memories of stepmother and the incident where Mucky Face injured her, and assures herself that she had been jealous and intended to hurt Stepmother.
- Briony argues with Mucky Face, but he does not back down on his assertion that it was not her. How strange, right?
- Mucky Face says he is sorry and wants Briony to write more stories about him. He says there is power in a story, and that if she writes about him, he'll never be forgotten.
- The pumping station explodes.
- Briony runs away.