ooms, or because they felt a natural kindness for one who
had brought their wives through confinement and ushered their
children into the world; and anyway there was sense in standing well
with a man who might at any time in this transitory world have to
decide the important question of your living or dying--managed to get
old Dapple harnessed in the gig, and the lamps lit, and to jog off
with the earliest. The drive of Penalune extends for a mile, and
along it, ahead of him and behind him, the voices of his
fellow-guests challenged one another in song, rising clear on the
frosty air,--

'In the month of November, in the year 'fifty-two,
Three jolly fox-hunters, all sons of the Blue,
Sing fol-de-rol, lol-de-rol--'

Beyond the lodge gates came the high-road, and here half a dozen of
the chorusers shouted goodnight, and rode away northward and by east
in the teeth of the wind; but the greater number bowled along with
the doctor south-west to the cross-roads under Barrow Down.
There the Polpeor road struck off to the left, and, swinging into it,
he found himself alone.

CHAPTER IV.

The night was moonless but strewn with stars. A tonic north-east
wind hummed over the high moors, and seemed to prick old Dapple,
prescient of his own straw and rack, to his very best trot. It was a
penetrating wind, too; but Doctor Unonius, wrapped in his frieze
coat, with the famous Penalune brandy playing about the cockles of
his heart, defied its chill. At this rate half an hour would bring
him to the gate of Landeweddy Farm, under the lee of Four Barrows;
and beyond Landeweddy, where the road plunged straight to Polpeor and
the coast, he would reach complete shelter. Let the wind blow from
this quarter never so fiercely, in the steep lanes under the seaward
edge of the moor a man could hear it screaming overhead and laugh at
it, lighting his pipe.

The sound of hoofs and wheels died away down the westward road.
Doctor Unonius, with face set for home, pursed his mouth and
inaudibly whistled a tune,--

'In the month of November, in the year 'fifty-two.'

'Whoa there, Dapple! Steady! Why, what ails the horse?'
For Dapple, as the gig turned a corner of road, on a sudden had shied
violently, half reared, and come to a halt with a jerk that set the
gig quivering, and had almost broken its shafts.

'Why, hallo!' exclaimed the doctor, peering forward.

To the right of the road, a little ahea