'Just
remembered it as I was shutting the door,' he said; 'it's only a stale
old Review I happened to have in my portmanteau; but you may not have
seen it, so I ran up and brought it down for you.'

'It's awfully good of you to think of it, really,' said Vincent, much
more cordially than he had spoken of late. He had been allowing
himself to dislike the other more and more, and this slight mark of
thoughtfulness gave him a pang of self-reproach.

'Well, it may amuse you to run through it,' said Caffyn, 'so I got it
for you.'

'Thanks,' said Holroyd, without offering to open the paper. 'I'll look
at it presently.'

'Don't make a favour of it, you know,' said Caffyn; 'perhaps you
prefer something heavier (you've mental resources of your own, I
know); but there it is if you care to look at it.'

'I'd give anything to see him read it!' he thought when he was
outside; 'but it really wouldn't be safe. I don't want him to suspect
my share in the business.' So he went on to the kitchen and was almost
instantly on the best of terms with the worthy farmers and innkeepers,
who had been tracking the fox on foot all day across the mountains.
Vincent shivered as he sat over the fire; he had overwalked himself
and caught a chill trudging home in the rain that afternoon over the
squelching rushy turf of Ennerdale, and now he was feeling too languid
and ill to rouse himself. There was a letter that must be written to
Mabel, but he felt himself unequal to attempting it just then, and was
rather glad than otherwise that the hotel inkstand, containing as it
did a deposit of black mud and a brace of pre-Adamite pens, decided
the matter for him. He took up the Review Caffyn had so considerately
provided for his entertainment and began to turn over the pages, more
from a sense of obligation than anything else. For some time he could
not keep his attention upon what he read.

He had dreamy lapses, in which he stood again on the mountain top he
had climbed that day, and looked down on the ridges of the
neighbouring ranges, which rose up all around like the curved spines
of couching monsters asleep there in the solemn stillness--and then he
came to himself with a start as the wind moaned along the winding
passages of the inn, stealthily lifting the latch of the primitive
sitting-room door, and swelling the carpet in a highly uncanny
fashion.

After one of these recoveries he made some effort to fix his thoughts,
and presently he found