At last, after wandering on and on for an indefinite space of time, he saw a light breaking through the trees. He shouted, and ran forward.
The light came from the windows of some building, and streamed brightly out into the darkness, lighting up the snowy ground, revealing the trees and branches in silhouette. Wild and despairing, he approached nearer, and saw a door, through the hinges of which shone a faint radiance. Then he recognized the place. It was the ruined chapel of Foxglove Manor.
He did not hesitate, but pushed open the door. He found himself in the building which George Haldane had turned from a temple of God into a laboratory of science. In the centre of it, surrounded by books, papers, and scientific implements of divers kinds, a man sat, calmly writing by the light of a brilliant oil-lamp.
As Santley entered, he looked up. The master of Foxglove Manor.
Spectral and ghastly, his hair dishevelled, his dress torn and disordered, covered with mud, the minister staggered into the chapel. Who, in that frenzied apparition, would have recognized the sometime spruce and comely Vicar of Omberley? In one of his falls he had cut his forehead on a tree or stone, and blood was oozing from the wound. He was a horrible sight—horrible and pitiable.
Haldane looked up, and nodded.
“So, it is you!” he said, pushing his papers aside.
A large meerschaum pipe lay on the table beside him, with a box of lucifers. He struck a light, and quietly began to smoke, as he continued—
“You have returned quickly. Pray, have you brought the police with you?” Without answering him directly, Santley approached the table, and, fixing his wild eyes upon him, demanded in a hollow voice—
“What are you doing?”