"Don't eat it all before I come; I must run up to the Tor; I have dropped my whip there," said Charles. "James, ride my horse home; you look tired. I shall be there on foot in half the time."
He had cast the reins to James, and was gone, and they all turned homewards together.
Charles, fleet of foot, was up on the Tor in a few minutes, and had picked up his missing property; then he sat him down on a stone, thinking.
"There is something confoundedly wrong somewhere, and I should like to find out what it is. What had that Jack priest been up to, that made him look so queer? And also, what was the matter between Ellen and William last night? Whom has she been going on with? I will go down. I wish I could find some trace of him. One thing I know, and one thing only, that he hates me worse than poison; and that his is not likely to be a passive hatred."
The wood into which Charles descended was of very large extent, and composed of the densest copse, intersected by long straight grass rides. The day had turned dark and chilly; and a low moaning wind began to sweep through the bare boughs, rendering still more dismal the prospect of the long-drawn vistas of damp grass and rotting leaves.
He passed musing on from one ride to another, and in one of them came in sight of a low, white building, partly ruinous, which had been built in the deepest recesses of the wood for a summer-house. Years ago Cuthbert and Charles used to come and play there on happy summer holidays—play at being Robinson Crusoe and what not; but there had been a fight with the poachers there, and one of their young men had been kicked in the head by one of the gang, and rendered idiotic; and Charles had seen the blood on the grass next morning; and so they voted it a dismal place, and never went near it again. Since then it had been taken possession of by the pheasants to dust themselves in. Altogether it was a solitary, ghostly sort of place; and, therefore, Charles was considerable startled, on looking in at the low door, to see a female figure, sitting unmoveable in the darkest corner.
It was not a ghost, for it spoke. It said, "Are you come back to upbraid me again? I know my power, and you shall never have it." And Charles said, "Ellen!"
She looked up, and began to cry. At first a low, moaning cry, and afterwards a wild passionate burst of grief.
He drew her towards him, and tried to quiet her, but she drew away. "Not to-day," she cried, "not to-day."
"What is the matter, pretty one? What is the matter, sister?" said Charles.