it?" he asked.

"What?" repeated Hugh, and added, absently, "who can tell?"

Up and down the room he walked restlessly, his eyes bent on the floor,
his face drawn down into lines. At length he stood and picked up the hat
he had thrown on the couch.

"Bonnithorne," he said, "you and I thought we saw into the heart of a
mystery. Heaven pity us for blind moles! I fear we saw nothing."

"Why--what--how so--when--" Mr. Bonnithorne stammered, and then stopped
short.

Hugh had walked out of the room and out of the house. He leaped into the
saddle and rode away.

The wind had risen yet higher; it blew an icy blast from behind him as
he cantered home. Through the hazy atmosphere a cloud of dun, vaporish
red could be seen trailing over the dim fells. It poised above the ball
crown of the Eel Crags like a huge supernatural bird with outstretched
wings.

Hugh held the reins with half-frozen hands. He barely felt the biting
cold. His soul was in a tumult, and he was driven on by fears that were
all but insupportable. For months a thick veil had overspread his
conscience, and now, in an instant, and by an accident, it was being
rent asunder. He had lulled his soul to sleep. But no opiate of
sophistry could keep the soul from waking. His soul was waking now. He
began to suspect that he had been acting like a scoundrel.

At the vicarage he stopped, dismounted, and entered. Standing in the
hall, he overheard voices in the kitchen. They were those of Brother
Peter and little Jacob Berry, the tailor, who had been hired to sew by
the day, and was seated on the dresser.

"I've heard of such sights afore," the little tailor was saying. "When
auld Mother Langdale's son was killed at wrustlin' down Borrowdale way,
and Mother Langdale was abed with rheumatis, she saw him come to the
bed-head a-dripping wet with blood, as plain as plain could be, and in
less nor an hour after they brought him home to the auld body on a
shutter--they did, for sure."

"Shaf on sec stories! I don't know as some folks aren't as daft as
Mother Langdale herself!" Peter muttered in reply.

Hugh Ritson beat the door heavily with his riding-whip.

"Parson Christian at home now?" he asked, when Peter opened it.

"Been and gone," said Peter.

"Did you tell him I meant to come back?"

"Don't know as I did."

Hugh's whip came down impatiently on his leggins.

"Do you know anything?" he asked. "Do you know that you are now talking
to a gentleman?"

"D