"We're off for a scramble, old girl," he explained. And the mare, who had long ago guessed as much, almost harnessed herself, so eager was she to be off.
She didn't want to pull up at Gabriel's door, but a touch of the curb gave her a broad enough hint that she was to subdue inclination for once. The preacher came to the gate; he looked worth two of his usual self, what with the light of anticipation in his face, and the spick-and-span riding togs which replaced his sober gear of the morning.
"Are you ready?" Lomax shouted.
"Ay, and waiting," answered Gabriel, in a clear, ringing voice. "The chestnut has been saddled this half-hour past."
Away they went at a swinging pace along the good hard road that leads across the Lancashire border. They rattled down the hill and up again on the other side, past the wooded rise where Wynyates hamlet looks over Scartop Water. They slackened half-way up the hill, and Griff jerked his whip towards Wynyates Hall as they went by.
"A fine old place, that. It's taken at last, so Jack o' Ling Crag tells me."
"Taken, is it? I wouldn't change places with whoever is going to live there," muttered the preacher.
"Why, Hirst, I believe you're as bad as the rest of them. Do you put your trust in that ridiculous ghost of a brandy-bottle which Jack is always talking about?"
"There were men who came to an evil end up there," said Gabriel, slowly, "and it stands to reason they won't rest quiet in their graves." He drew his horse close up to Lassie, and peered into Griff's face. "Lad, it's all very well to talk and laugh and joke when you're above ground: but what is it when you've got six feet of earth above you, and there comes a rap-rap at the coffin-lid, and you ask who's knocking—and a voice comes out of the blackness and whispers of Judgment Day—and your body is mad to move, and can't—and your spirit breaks clean through for very suffering, and walks the earth till the world's end, thinking on the vengeance of the Lord——"
Griff looked out over the moor, quiet as death, with the moonlight dappling the hollows, and the road stretching on, on before him, a streaky grey, far as the silent sky. He trembled at the preacher's imagery; ghosts and another world seemed the only realities in this night-girdled land. Then he felt the mare's belly under his legs, and the breath of life in his body.