She put on a cloak, and drew the pretty frilled hood over her head; then waited till she heard the men come up, and the drawing-room door close on the last of them. She went softly out by the side door, cutting short the growl of a chained-up mastiff by telling him who she was. Then across the whitened lawn, and up the rise till the open moor was gained—a slender, girlish figure, flitting shadow-like amongst the silent flakes. Her heart failed her as she reached the top; she seemed to be the sport of the storm-elves, and there was no living thing to help her to battle with the loneliness. She tried to sing, that so she might trick herself into the thought that she had company; but her voice was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and it sank affrighted by its own power to people the stillness with re-echoing cries. Her knees shook under her, and the bridle track showed dimly—more dimly, it seemed, with each succeeding step. Not till now had she understood what was meant by her foolhardy resolve to cross the five miles of desolation that lay between herself and Wynyates.
At the end of a mile, just after she had turned into the cart-road that ran past Lawfoot Water, she clashed against some one walking in the opposite direction.
"Beg pardon," said a gruff voice. "I didn't fancy there'd be more nor one fooil abroad to-neet."
At any other time the girl would have been frightened out of her senses; but the voice rang honest, and any human company was better than that awful silence which had gone before.
"Stay!" she cried, as the stranger was about to pass on. "Where are you going?"
The man slewed round on his heels and began to make a queer cackling noise in his throat, suggestive of sour merriment.
"To which I'd answer, Who the devil may ye be, an' what is't to ye where I'm wending? Ye've a lass's voice, an' a snod sort of a figure, what I can see on't—but it beäts me to know what ye're after, scampering across th' moor at this time of a wild neet."
"I want to get to Wynyates, and you are going to show me the way."
Janet, fearless now, had come close up to her companion, and rested a hand on his sleeve.
"Begow, tha'rt a cool un!" he muttered, half admiringly. "But I can't do't; there's a wife an' three waiting at home, an' I mun put th' best foot forrard to reach 'em come ten o'clock."