Colin II: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

This was all very uncomfortable, and he paused, wondering what to do next. If he could not find his way across a mile of pasture, it would be mere folly to attempt to go back on the course he had come. It would have been infinitely better to have gone into that shepherd’s hut when he had the chance, and waited for the mist to lift; now the wisest thing would be to try again to find his way back there, for it was somewhere close to this gate to which he had inadvertently returned.

He set off, and now with a clearer recollection of his bearings he met with better success, and presently he found the hut again. There was no one there, and there was no door to it, but at any rate there was a roof to cover him, and wooden walls for shelter, and inside there was a pile of straw, dry and plentiful, into which he could burrow for warmth while he waited.

The moisture of the mist was thick on his clothes, like dew on fleece, and his face and hands were chilled and wet with it. His long walk had tired him, and the relief of finding shelter and rest was great and he sat down on the straw and made himself as comfortable as he could. What time it was he had no idea, for he was without matches, and it was now so dark that he could not see his watch. The doorless entrance was but a glimmering greyness against the blackness of the interior, and he wondered whether, even if the mist cleared, he could find his way home before morning. Perhaps there was a moon, but time alone would show that, and his thoughts began to stray in other directions.

It was an odd adventure: just so had old Colin, when a shepherd boy, passed the night in some such hut as this, probably within a few hundred yards of where he himself now sat, and that certainly had been no unfortunate experience for him, for on that night the splendid fortunes and prosperity of the house of which now he himself was head had been founded. Health and wealth and honour and all that his heart desired had been granted to his ancestor on that night of the legend, into the inheritance of which he had entered by his love of evil, and his hate of love.... And then the thought of Dennis came up like a bubble to the surface of his mind, Dennis whom he hated and had tried to corrupt, and who was the heir to all his splendours.

Colin was getting drowsy in the warmth of his straw-bed; for a moment, as token of that, he thought he heard Dennis’s voice, and that roused him again. But sleep was the most reasonable manner of passing these hours of waiting, which might be long; and it was certainly better than thinking about Dennis. Thicker and thicker, like the mists outside, the dusk of sleep darkened round him.

He slept soundly and dreamlessly, and woke, after some interval of the length of which he had no idea, into the full possession of his faculties, so that he had no puzzled bewilderment as to where he was or how he had come here: this waking consciousness dovetailed precisely into that which had preceded his sleep. Probably he had slept long, for he woke alert and refreshed, warm and comfortable under the straw that he had pulled over him. But close on the heels of his waking there came the conviction that he was not alone here. He had gone to sleep alone, far away from the haunts of men in the isolation of the mist, but while he slept someone had come.

He sat up, and turning looked towards the blank doorway. It was still faintly visible, a dusky oblong in the blackness, but now it framed the figure as of a man, which stood there in the entry. Some shepherd was it, who, like himself, sought shelter?

“Hullo, who is that?” said Colin. “I have lost my way, and am sheltering here till the mist clears. Lord Yardley from Stanier.”

There was silence, then very quietly a voice spoke:

“I know who you are,” it said.