And then his voice became too low for me to hear, till he said, "Those who go by the Milky Way often leave footprints. So let him go by the other."
And then he got up to go, and I crept back to my room. But not a wink of sleep did I get that night for thinking over what I had heard. For though it seemed gibberish, it gave me the shivers, and that's a fact. And mad folks are often as dangerous as bad ones, so I hope your Worship will excuse me writing like this, and that you'll favour me with an answer by return, and take Master Ranulph away, for I don't like the look in the widow's eye when she looks at him, that I don't.
And hoping this finds your Worship well as it leaves me,—I am, Your Worship's humble obedient servant,
LUKE HEMPEN.
How Master Nathaniel longed to jump on to his horse and ride post-haste to the farm! But that was impossible. Instead, he immediately despatched a groom with orders to ride day and night and deliver a letter to Luke Hempen, which bade him instantly take Ranulph to the farm near Moongrass (a village that lay some fifteen miles north of Swan-on-the-Dapple) from which for years he had got his cheeses.
Then he sat down and tried to find some meaning in the mysterious conversation Luke had overheard.
Ambrose seeing a vision! An unknown Chief! Footprints on the Milky Way!
Reality was beginning to become very shadowy and menacing.
He must find out something about this widow. Had she not once appeared in the law-courts? He decided he must look her up without a moment's delay.
He had inherited from his father a fine legal library, and the bookshelves in his pipe-room were packed with volumes bound in vellum and old calf of edicts, codes, and trials. Some of them belonged to the days before printing had been introduced into Dorimare, and were written in the crabbed hand of old town-clerks.