"Is the fog as thick on the moor as they say?" asked Lady Eleanor,
speaking bravely, though she was white to the lips.

"So thick that without a compass I could not have found my way across
it," said Colonel George. "It is right that you should know the truth.
But the farmers on the edge of the moor know what has happened and are
riding as far as they dare with whistles and horns--Brimacott saw to
that--and I propose to join them myself at once."

"I shall go with you," said Lady Eleanor, quietly.

Colonel George hesitated for a moment and then answered as quietly: "Be
it so; then you must ride my horse, which is cleverer on the moor than
any of yours. I will take my groom's, and you must let him have a
horse to take back some directions from me to Fitzdenys. Brimacott,
with your permission, shall watch the road by which you drove out this
morning, in case the ponies should find their way there."

Lady Eleanor soon came down in her habit, impatient to start, but found
Colonel George writing, with a tray of food and drink set down by him.
"You cannot start until you have eaten something," was all that he
said. "We may have a long ride and a long watch before us;" and Lady
Eleanor gulped down a few morsels, for she felt, while hardly knowing
why, that Colonel George had taken command and that she must obey
orders. In a few minutes he finished writing and sent the letter back
to Fitzdenys Court. Then he slung a field-glass over his shoulders;
and Lady Eleanor's heart sank low as she walked with him to the door,
for she perceived that he expected the search to be prolonged beyond
the night. "Courage," he said, as if reading her thoughts; and they
went out and rode away together into the dark.

CHAPTER VIII

And what had become of Dick and Elsie? The account given by the
Corporal had, of course, been perfectly true. It was Dick who had been
the first to see the hunted stag about a quarter of a mile away,
travelling along at that steady lurching gallop which seems so slow and
is so astonishingly swift; and it had needed all the Corporal's
firmness to keep the boy from galloping after him on the spot. And
then after a time the hounds had come on upon the line of the deer,
their great white bodies conspicuous as they strode on in long drawn
file across the waste of pale green grass, and the sound of their deep
voices booming faintly over the vast solitude. Surely and steadily
they pressed on, seeming lik