peration. But he could think of nothing else. He felt
it urgently needful to see Margaret. Night after night he dreamed that
she was at the point of death, and heavy fetters prevented him from
stretching out a hand to help her. At last he could stand it no more. He
told a brother surgeon that private business forced him to leave London,
and put the work into his hands. With no plan in his head, merely urged
by an obscure impulse, he set out for the village of Venning, which was
about three miles from Skene.

It was a tiny place, with one public-house serving as a hotel to the rare
travellers who found it needful to stop there, and Arthur felt that some
explanation of his presence was necessary. Having seen at the station an
advertisement of a large farm to let, he told the inquisitive landlady
that he had come to see it. He arrived late at night. Nothing could be
done then, so he occupied the time by trying to find out something about
the Haddos.

Oliver was the local magnate, and his wealth would have made him an easy
topic of conversation even without his eccentricity. The landlady roundly
called him insane, and as an instance of his queerness told Arthur, to
his great dismay, that Haddo would have no servants to sleep in the
house: after dinner everyone was sent away to the various cottages in
the park, and he remained alone with his wife. It was an awful thought
that Margaret might be in the hands of a raving madman, with not a soul
to protect her. But if he learnt no more than this of solid fact, Arthur
heard much that was significant. To his amazement the old fear of the
wizard had grown up again in that lonely place, and the garrulous woman
gravely told him of Haddo's evil influence on the crops and cattle of
farmers who had aroused his anger. He had had an altercation with his
bailiff, and the man had died within a year. A small freeholder in the
neighbourhood had refused to sell the land which would have rounded off
the estate of Skene, and a disease had attacked every animal on his farm
so that he was ruined. Arthur was impressed because, though she reported
these rumours with mock scepticism as the stories of ignorant yokels and
old women, the innkeeper had evidently a terrified belief in their truth.
No one could deny that Haddo had got possession of the land he wanted;
for, when it was put up to auction, no one would bid against him, and he
bought it for a song.

As soon as he could do so naturally, Arthu