In the morning it was the same, with the exception that Gridley looked strangely pale about the cheeks. Again he took no share of the meal, but in the middle of breakfast he came up to the table in an odd, violent fashion, falling back only when Mistress Gridley snatched up a knife, and made a playful thrust at him. She laughed at the same time, but the laugh was not musical, and the child, detecting a false note in it, grew puzzled. Even for him the scene had lost its humor. The man's face, as he retired cowed and baffled to the window-seat, where the side light brought out all that was most repulsive in his craven features, told a tale there was no mistaking. The child stayed awhile, fascinated by the spectacle, and saw the woman take her seat on the meal chest and spin, smiling and patient, while Gridley gnawed his nails and devoured her with his eyes. But the longer he watched the more frightened he grew; and at last he broke the spell with an effort, and fled to the purer air outside. He was wise, for the morn was at its best. It was the most perfect morning of the year. Ingleborough had no cap on, Penighent stood up hard and sharp against the blue sky. The summer sunshine, unrelieved by a single cloud or so much as a wreath of mist, fell hotly on the open moor, where the larks sank and the bees hummed, and the boy's heart rose in sympathy with the life about him. Feeling an unwonted lightness and cheerfulness, he started to climb the fell at the back of the house, following the right bank of the hollow in which the yew-trees grew. This hollow, as it rose to a level with the upper moor, spent itself in a dozen fissures, which, radiating in every direction, drained the moss. Some were three or four feet deep, some ten or twelve, with steep and everhanging edges. Presently the boy found his progress barred by one of these, and peeping into its shadowy depths, which a little to his left melted into the gloom of the yew-trees, grew timid and stopped, sitting down and looking back the way he had come, to gain courage. For a while his eyes dwelt idly on the sunny slope. Then on a sudden he saw a sight which he remembered all his life. A quarter of a mile below the house, a road crossed the moor. On this a solitary horseman had just appeared, urging a piebald horse to a tired trot, while continually looking back the way he had come. The boy had scarcely remarked him and the strange color of his steed, when a second rider came into sight over the brow, with a man running by his side and clinging to his stirrup-leather. To him succeeded two more horsemen, trotting abreast and spurring furiously; and then while the lad wondered what it all meant, and who these people were, a single footman topped the brow, and after running a score of paces--but not in the direction the others had taken--flung himself down on his face among the bracken. [Illustration: Flung himself on his face among the bracken.--Page 59.]