The wind sobbed coldly; wan clouds sped to hood the moon with darkness. Brown hares crouched among the coarse marrum grasses, the dun owls were afloat upon the air, sounding their oboe notes, and always the high unseen flight of whistling ducks went on all over the desolate majesty of the marshes.
And beyond it all, through it all, could be heard the hollow organs of the sea.
Lothian was walking rapidly. His breathing was heavy and muffled. He skirted the marsh and did not go upon it, passing along the grass slope of foreshore which even a full marsh tide never conquered; going back upon his own trail, parallel to the village.
There were sharp pricking pains in his knees and ankles. Hot sweat clotted his clothes to his body and rained down his face. But he was unaware of this. His alarming physical condition was as nothing.
He went on through the dark, hurriedly, like a man in ambush.
Now and then he stumbled at inequalities of the ground or caught his foot in furze roots. Obscene words escaped him when this happened. They burst from between the hot cracked lips, mechanical and thin. The weak complaints of some poor filthy-minded ghost!
He knew nothing of what he said.
But with knife-winds upon his face, thin needles in his joints; sodden flesh quivering with nervous tremors and wet with warm brine, he went onwards with purpose.
He was in the Amnesic Dream-phase.
Every foul and bestial impulse which is hidden in the nature of man was riotous and awake.