s proposition that they should drive thither in
hope of meeting the mail-train, was overruled by Mountclere.

'We will have nothing more to do with chance,' he said. 'We may miss the
train, and then we shall have gone out of the way for nothing. More than
that, the down mail does not stop till it gets several miles beyond the
nearest station for Knollsea; so it is hopeless.'

'If there had only been a telegraph to the confounded place!'

'Telegraph--we might as well telegraph to the devil as to an old booby
and a damned scheming young widow. I very much question if we shall do
anything in the matter, even if we get there. But I suppose we had
better go on now?'

'You can do as you like. I shall go on, if I have to walk every step
o't.'

'That's not necessary. I think the best posting-house at this end of the
town is Tempett's--we must knock them up at once. Which will you
do--attempt supper here, or break the back of our journey first, and get
on to Anglebury? We may rest an hour or two there, unless you feel
really in want of a meal.'

'No. I'll leave eating to merrier men, who have no sister in the hands
of a cursed old Vandal.'

'Very well,' said Mountclere. 'We'll go on at once.'

An additional half-hour elapsed before they were fairly started, the
lateness and abruptness of their arrival causing delay in getting a
conveyance ready: the tempestuous night had apparently driven the whole
town, gentle and simple, early to their beds. And when at length the
travellers were on their way the aspect of the weather grew yet more
forbidding. The rain came down unmercifully, the booming wind caught it,
bore it across the plain, whizzed it against the carriage like a sower
sowing his seed. It was precisely such weather, and almost at the same
season, as when Picotee traversed the same moor, stricken with her great
disappointment at not meeting Christopher Julian.

Further on for several miles the drive lay through an open heath, dotted
occasionally with fir plantations, the trees of which told the tale of
their species without help from outline or colour; they spoke in those
melancholy moans and sobs which give to their sound a solemn sadness
surpassing even that of the sea. From each carriage-lamp the long rays
stretched like feelers into the air, and somewhat cheered the way, until
the insidious damp that pervaded all things above, around, and
underneath, overpowered one of them, and rendered every at