There was no hint plainly to be gained from her, and I had stayed too long, as it was. I took up my hat.
"You will stay here?" I asked. "I do not say that you will hear from me soon, but I must needs know where you are."
"I will stay here," she replied. She almost stretched out her hand and drew it in again. "Goodbye."
I went to the door. She followed me with the lamp and held it over the balusters of the landing.
"Nay," said I, "there is no need for that."
"The staircase," said she, "is very dark." As I came out from the houses at the bottom of the hill I heard again the watchman's voice behind me bawling out the hour. It was half-past one, and a cloudy morning, it may be, but the clouds were lighter in the north, as I remarked with some anxiety. I was still riding along Newlands valley when the morning began to break. As I reached the summit of Buttermere Hause I looked backwards over my shoulder. The sky in the north-east was a fiery glow, saffron, orange, and red were mingled there, and right across the medley of colours lay black, angry strips of cloud. The blaze of a fire, it seemed to me, seen through prison bars. It was daylight when I passed by Buttermere, sunlight as I rode down Gillerthwaite. The sweet stillness of the morning renewed my blood. The bracken bloomed upon the hillsides, here a rusty brown, there in the shadow a blackish purple, and then again gold where the sunlight kissed it Below me, by the water's side, I could see the blue tiles of Applegarth. And as I looked about me the fever of my thoughts died, they took a new and unfamiliar quietude from the stable quietude of the hills. I felt as if something of their patience, something of their strength was entering into me. My memories went back again to the Superior's study in the College at Paris; and in my heart of hearts I knew that the Superior was wrong. The mountains have their message, I think, for whoso will lend an ear to them, and that morning they seemed to speak to me with an unanimous voice. I can repair, I thought, this wrong. It was then more to me than a thought. It seemed, indeed, an assured and simple truth, assured and simple like those peaks in the clear air, and, like them, pointing skywards, and the Superior's theory no more substantial than a cloud which may gather upon the peaks and hide them for a little from the eyes.
I rode down, therefore, in a calmer spirit than I had known for some long time. The difficulties which beset my path did not for the moment trouble me. That my journey that night had in no way lightened them I did not consider. I felt that the occasion of which I was in search would of a surety come, only I must be ready to grasp it.
I had passed no one on the road. I had seen, indeed, no sign of life at all beyond the sudden rush of a flock of sheep, as though in an unaccountable panic, up the hillside of the Pillar mountain, while I was as yet in the narrow path of Gillerthwaite. I had reason, therefore, to think that I had escaped all notice, and leading the horse back to the stable with the same precautions I had used on setting out, I let myself in at the door and got quietly to bed.