Moist, wayward spurts of wind rustled the fallen leaves. The undergrowth was stealthy with the feet of things that fled, of bigger things that hunted. A night-jar cried harshly in the thickest of the wood. From the slopes beyond came the rough call of a buck to his mate, telling her to get behind him while he met some peril threatening both.
The streams had their own eerie music, too. Fed by swift-melting snow, they sobbed and crooned and wailed as they raced to Wharfe River far below. And the wind would not be still.
Hardcastle rode through the haunted land with a song at his heart, such as nothing brought to him these days except night-time on the Logie roads. They said he would never marry, and he knew they said it. They lied, as usual, for he had wived these grim and tender lands handed down to him by generations whose voices lived about the house of Logie.
The dusk of the forest kept him company till he rode into the open, and saw the free, spacious road wind up to Logie under the scudding moonlight. It was good to be alive, with such a heritage.
Then suddenly his horse blundered. Before he had time to try to break his fall, he was thrown across the road and into the dark hollow bordering the wood. One half of him lay soft and wet; the other jarred on something lean and bony—something that rapped out stifled curses, and turned under him with writhing fury, and strove to get a grip about his throat.
They fought together in the hollow, he and his unseen adversary, till their hands grew slippery with mud and it was hard to get any sort of hold.
“From Garsykes, you?” gasped Hardcastle, feeling for the grip that should settle all. “Swine love the ditches.”
No answer came. His enemy was striving, too, for the strangle-hold that constantly eluded him. The stealthy fight went on. The whole world was narrowed to this dark corner by the roadway, and the slime sucked and gurgled under the weight of their striving bodies.
Then Hardcastle found his chance, and took it. He got one arm under the man’s thighs, the other round his shoulders, lifted him with savage strength, and pitched him clear into the roadway.
When he clambered after him, the moonlight, clear and blue, showed him a lank figure getting up from the wet, grey road.