"God save us, 'tis a ghost; a human ghost!" cried the first speaker.
"'Tis a white thing on two legs, sure," answered the vicar, with trepidation.
"'Tis the devil come for you; he spoke your name," said their companion, affrightedly; and instantly came the sound of feet running away like mad.
Holyday pursued, shouting, "'Tis I, Ralph Holyday!" But the poachers, hearing the name, and thinking it to be the spirit of Holyday come to announce his own death, were soon quite out of hearing.
Losing their direction, and knowing his wornout legs were no match for their fresher ones, Holyday sank to the earth, ready to weep with vexation.
"I see," he wailed. "'Tis a mockery devised to torment me. To lift me out of the mire of despair into the very arms of my friend, and then to fling me back deeper! A fine joke, no doubt, on the part of Heaven; but why one poor scholar should provide all the mirth, I do not clearly perceive. Was it indeed Sir Nick, or was it but an illusion of mine ears? 'Tis all the same. Well, I will sit shivering here till daylight; what else can I do?"
But suddenly came the rain, a wind-driven deluge, showing its full fury at the outset. In a trice the scholar was drenched; the drops seemed to beat him down; there was no surcease of them. He ran for cover, and presently gained that of another part of the wood. But even the trees could not keep out this downpour. Water streamed from the branches upon his head and body. He was flung upon, buffeted, half-drowned. Never had he received such a castigation from man or nature. He thought the elements were arrayed against him, earth to trip and bruise him, air to chill him, fire to delude him, water to flog him to death. But on he went, moved always by a feeling that any spot must be better than that whereon he was. At last he saw another light.
"Nay, nay," said he; "I am not to be fooled so again. Go to, Jack-with-the-lantern! I chase no more will-o'-the-wisps."
But he bethought him that such a rain would put out any false fire; moreover, he was in a wood, on high ground. And then, as he approached, the light took the form of a candle in a window. He remembered what the poacher had said. This must be the keeper's lodge; if the candle was still in the window, the keeper had not yet come home,—the rain had caught him too. The keeper being still abroad, his door might not be fastened. With a sense of having reached the limit of endurance of the rain's pelting,—for his thin shirt was no protection,—he dashed blindly for the window, which was on the leeward side of the lodge. He felt his way along the front of the house to the entrance, pushed the door open, and stepped into a low, comfortable apartment, like the kitchen and living room of a yeoman's cottage. Out of the rain and wind at last, his grateful legs bore him across the room to a bench. He sat down, nestling back to a great deer-skin that hung against the bare wall of wood and plaster.
At one side of the room was a door to another apartment; at the back was a ladder-like set of wooden steps leading to a trap-way in the ceiling. Holyday had scarce observed these details by the candle in the window, when a coarse female voice, as of one suddenly roused from sleep, called out from the other room: "Is't thou, Jack? Time thou wert home!—hear the rain."