“Oh, you’ll pull through that easily enough. Your bottle is not empty yet.”
“Jove! I’d forgotten the bottle,” said Skeggs, with animation.
He took it out of his pocket, and held it up to the light. “Not more than a quartern left. Well, that’s better than none at all.”
“Goodbye,” said Kester, as he shook some of the snow off his hat. “You may look for help in less than an hour.”
“Goodbye, Mr. St. George,” said Skeggs, looking very earnestly at him as he did so.
“You won’t forget to send the help, will you? because if you do forget, it will be nothing more nor less than wilful murder.”
Kester laughed a short grating laugh. “Fear nothing, Skeggs,” he said. “I won’t forget. About that other trifle, I will write you in two or three days. Again goodbye.”
Skeggs’s face had turned very white. He could not speak. He took off his hat and waved it. Kester responded by a wave of his hand. Then turning on his heel he strode away through the snowy twilight. In three minutes he was lost to sight. Skeggs could no longer see him. Tears came into his eyes. “He’ll send no help, not he. I shall die here like a dog. The snow will be my winding-sheet. If ever there was mischief in a man’s eye, there was in his, as he bade me goodbye.”
Onward strode Kester St. George through the blinding snow. Altogether heedless of the weather was he just now. He had other things to think about. As instinctively as an Indian or a backwoodsman tracks his way across prairie or forest did he track his way across the moor, all hidden though the paths now were. He was a child of the moor. He had learned its secrets when a boy, and in his present emergency, reason and intellect must perforce give way to that blind instinct which was left him as a legacy of his youth.
At length the last patch of moorland was crossed, and a few minutes later he found himself close by a well-remembered finger-post, where three roads met. One of these roads led to Sedgeley, which was but a short quarter of a mile away; another of them led to Duxley and Park Newton. At Sedgeley his horse was waiting for him. There, too, was to be had the help which he had so faithfully promised Skeggs that he would send. Leaning against the finger-post, he took a minute’s rest before going any farther. Which road should he take? That was the question which at present he was turning over and over in his mind. Not long did he hesitate. Taking out his pocket-handkerchief, he made a wisp of it, and tied it round his throat. Then he turned up the collar of his coat. Then once again he shook the snow off his hat. Then plunging his hands deep in his pockets, and turning his back on the finger-post, he set out resolutely along the road that led towards Park Newton. Once, and once only did he pause, even for a moment, before reaching home. It was when he fancied that he heard, away in the far distance, a low, wild, melancholy cry—whether the cry of an animal or a man he could not tell—but none the less a cry for help. Whatever it was, it did not come again, and after that Kester pursued his way homeward steadily and without pause. It was quite dark long before he reached his own room.