"What!" laughed Anthony; "will you teach me how to manage a horse?"
"I have had to do with horses every whit as much as yourself," she replied. "Remember, I am the Wild Maid of the Moors."
He made no reply, but again essayed to force the cob to enter the water. Suddenly Urith, still stationed in midstream, uttered an exclamation of surprise, not unmingled with alarm.
She saw black figures emerge on the hill shoulder, visible against the lurid sky, and then descend along the Lyke-Way, coming along the same track, in the same direction.
At once there rushed upon her the stories she had heard of ghostly trains of mourners, sweeping at night along this road, and of the ill-luck that attended such as cast eyes on them.
"Look!—look!" she exclaimed, now in real terror. "Who are they?—what are they? They are following us, Anthony Cleverdon! Do not let us see them more. Do not let them overtake us."
CHAPTER III. CAUGHT UP ON THE WAY.
Anthony looked back. Strange was the appearance of the moor side, half-lighted by the skies reddened with the reflection of fires beyond the hills, but with its surface travelled ever by sparks. An imaginative mind might have thought that mountain gnomes were alert, and were rambling torch in hand over the moor. Now one red spark wandered along in solitude, then out flashed a second, and ran to meet it; as if they were the lights of comrades hailing each other. Suddenly a score sparkled and danced in a ring, and were as suddenly extinguished. Or it might be supposed that the spirits of the primeval tin-workers had returned to earth once more, and were revisiting their ancient circles and avenues of stone, to perform in them the rites of a forgotten religion.
To the south-east rose Mistor, one of the loftiest summits on the moor, on whose rocky crest, scooped out by wind and water, is a huge circular bowl, called by the natives the Devil's Fryingpan, in which he prepares the storms that lash and explode on the moor. And now it really seemed as though the Spirit of the Tempest were at work, brewing in his bowl.