tched involuntarily, for to Adrian's racked nerves and distorted
vision this ghost of the good man whom he had betrayed was no child of
phantasy. He had woken in the night and seen it standing at his bedside,
plague-defiled and hunger-wasted, and because of it he dreaded to sleep
alone, especially in that creaking, rat-haunted mill, whose very board
seemed charged with some tale of death and blood. Heavens! At this very
moment he thought he could hear that dead voice calling down the
gale. No, it must be the curlew, but at least he would be going home.
Home--that place home--with not even a priest near to confess to and be
comforted!

Thanks be to the Saints! the wind had dropped a little, but now in place
of it came the snow, dense, whirling, white; so dense indeed that he
could scarcely see his path. What an end that would be, to be frozen to
death in the snow on these sand-hills while the spirit of Dirk van Goorl
sat near and watched him die with those hollow, hungry eyes. The sweat
came upon Adrian's forehead at the thought, and he broke into a run,
heading for the bank of the great dyke that pierced the dunes half a
mile or so away, which bank must, he knew, lead him to the mill. He
reached it and trudged along what had been the towpath, though now it
was overgrown with weeds and rushes. It was not a pleasant journey, for
the twilight had closed in with speed and the thick flakes, that seemed
to heap into his face and sting him, turned it into a darkness
mottled with faint white. Still he stumbled forward with bent head and
close-wrapped cloak till he judged that he must be near to the mill, and
halted staring through the gloom.

Just then the snow ceased for a while and light crept back to the cold
face of the earth, showing Adrian that he had done well to halt. In
front of where he stood, within a few paces of his feet indeed, for a
distance of quite twenty yards the lower part of the bank had slipped
away, washed from the stone core with which it was faced at this
point, by a slow and neglected percolation of water. Had he walked on
therefore, he would have fallen his own height or more into a slough of
mud, whence he might, or might not have been able to extricate himself.
As it was, however, by such light as remained he could crawl upon the
coping of the stonework which was still held in place with old struts
of timber that, until they had been denuded by the slow and constant
leakage, were buried and support