"It is your duty to yourself and to--"

"I care nothing for myself."

"And to your daughter--think of that. Would you tarnish the child's
name with the sin laid on the father's--"

"God in heaven help me!" cried Sim, tremulous with emotion. "Ralph,
Ralph, ask me no more--you don't know what you ask."

"It is your duty to Heaven, I say."

He put his hand on Sim's shoulder, and looked steadily in his eyes.
With a fearful cry Sim broke from his grasp, sprung to the door, and
in an instant was lost in the darkness without. Ralph stood where Sim
had left him, transfixed by some horrible consciousness. A slow
paralysis seemed to possess all his senses. What had he read in those
eyes that seemed to live before him still?

"Good neet," said old Matthew as he got up and trudged out. Most of
the company rose to go. "Good night," said more than one, but Ralph
answered nothing. Robbie Anderson was last.

"Good night, Ralph," he said. His gruff voice was thick in his throat.

"Aye, good night, lad," Ralph answered vacantly.

Robbie had got to the door, and was leaning with one hand on the
door-frame. Coming back, he said,--

"Ralph, where may your father be to-night?"

"At Gaskarth--it's market day--he took the last shearing."

He spoke like one in a sleep. Then Robbie left him.

"Is Rotha ready to go?" he asked.

CHAPTER V. THE EMPTY SADDLE.

The night has been unruly:...
Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death.
_Macbeth_.

The storm was now all but over. The moon shone clear, and the clouds
that scudded across its face were few. Lauvellen, to the east, was
visible to the summit; and Raven Craig, to the west, loomed black
before the moon. A cutting wind still blew, and a frost had set in
sharp and keen. Already the sleet that had fallen was frozen in sheets
along the road, which was thereby made almost impassable even to the
sure footsteps of the mountaineer. The trees no longer sighed and
moaned with the wind; on the stiffening firs lay beads of frozen snow,
and the wind as it passed through them soughed. The ghylls were fuller
and louder, and seemed to come from every hill; the gullocks
overflowed, but silence was stealing over the streams, and the deeper
rivers seemed scarcely to flow.

Ralph and Rotha walked side by side to Shoulthwaite Moss. It was
useless for the girl to return to Fornside, Ralph had said. Her father
would not be the