intervals down their brant and rugged sides. The air had not cleared
as the darkness came on. There was no moon. The stars could not
struggle through the vapor that lay beneath them. There was no wind.
It was a cold and silent night.

Rotha stood at the end of the lonnin, where the lane to Shoulthwaite
joined the pack-horse road. She was wrapped in a long woollen cloak
having a hood that fell deep over her face. Her father had parted from
her half an hour ago, and though the darkness had in a moment hidden
him from her sight, she had continued to stand on the spot at which he
had left her.

She was slight of figure and stronger of will than physique, but she
did not feel the cold. She was revolving the step she had taken, and
thinking how great an issue hung on the event. Sometimes she
mistrusted her judgment, and felt an impulse to run after her father
and bring him back. Then a more potent influence would prompt her to
start away and overtake him, yet only in order to bear his message the
quicker for her fleeter footsteps.

But no; Fate was in it: a power above herself seemed to dominate her
will. She must yield and obey. The thing was done.

The girl was turning about towards the house, when she heard footsteps
approaching her from the direction which her father had taken. She
could not help but pause, hardly knowing why, when the gaunt figure of
Mrs. Garth loomed large in the road beside her. Rotha would now have
hastened home, but the woman had recognized her in the darkness.

"How's all at Shoulth'et?" said Mrs. Garth in her blandest tones;