'All right,' said Roland. 'I won't turn in till you come back.'
Litvinoff sauntered out of the room and across the hall, took a stout oak stick from the hall-stand, and, opening the front-door, strolled leisurely down the carriage drive. But directly he was out in the road he pulled his hat down tightly upon his ears, vaulted a low stone wall and set off running in the direction of the mill as though a thousand devils were following at his heels.
FIRE!
O run at full speed across a Derbyshire moor by the uncertain light of a wintry moon is a feat not unattended with difficulty and danger, especially when the runner is not quite accustomed to the course; but it would have taken greater pitfalls than even those moors present to have made Count Litvinoff choose a longer and easier way. For when that shout had been borne to him on the wind he scented excitement and danger, and excitement and danger were to him as the breath of life. He was almost certain that the men meant mischief, and he intended to do his best to prevent it. His sympathies really were, as he had told Roland, entirely with them, and he was genuinely anxious that they should not add a criminal prosecution for riot to their other troubles. At the same time he looked forward with some pleasure to the scene in which he was now hastening to take a part.
He had been in a fretful and irritable state of mind ever since he had left London, and he cordially welcomed a row, and did not care much if in that row he got a knock on the head that would put an end to his visit and his life at the same time. At any rate, the situation offered a chance of action, and it was action more than anything that he had been longing for lately.
As he got nearer the valley in which the mill lay he was able to form a better idea of what was toward, for the shouts seemed to get louder and louder. He quickened his pace at the moment when he reached the brow of the hill, from the foot of which all the noise and clamour arose, and paused, looking down; a lurid flash of flame lighted up for an instant the semi-darkness before him, and as suddenly died out again.