At the end of a mile, just after she had turned into the cart-road that ran past Lawfoot Water, she clashed against some one walking in the opposite direction. "Beg pardon," said a gruff voice. "I didn't fancy there'd be more nor one fooil abroad to-neet." At any other time the girl would have been frightened out of her senses; but the voice rang honest, and any human company was better than that awful silence which had gone before. "Stay!" she cried, as the stranger was about to pass on. "Where are you going?" The man slewed round on his heels and began to make a queer cackling noise in his throat, suggestive of sour merriment. "To which I'd answer, Who the devil may _ye_ be, an' what is't to ye where I'm wending? Ye've a lass's voice, an' a snod sort of a figure, what I can see on't--but it beäts me to know what ye're after, scampering across th' moor at this time of a wild neet." "I want to get to Wynyates, and you are going to show me the way." Janet, fearless now, had come close up to her companion, and rested a hand on his sleeve. "Begow, tha'rt a cool un!" he muttered, half admiringly. "But I can't do't; there's a wife an' three waiting at home, an' I mun put th' best foot forrard to reach 'em come ten o'clock." "I _must_ cross to Wynyates, I tell you, and I'm afraid of losing my way if I go alone. Can you find it with snow on the ground?" "Well, I reckon I can. I've known it, man an' boy, these forty year." "If money will persuade you, you can take my purse and welcome. I don't know how much there is in it, but if it isn't enough----" "I don't want your money," growled the man. "I niver said a word to leäd ye to think I wanted that." "Then you won't come?" she said impatiently. He shuffled from one foot to another, continued his growls in an undertone, and finally started off in the direction of Wynyates. "Ay, I'll come. Ye may be up to no godliness, but ye've got some sperrit in ye--an' that's saying a deal for a woman. Come on." As Captain Laverack was playing whist in the drawing-room, and inwardly reviling his partner's experimental style of play, the butler came behind his chair and asked for a word with him. "All right, Denman; it will wait till we've finished our rubber, I suppose?" "It _will_ wait, sir, but----" Laverack saw from the man's air that the matter was a grave one, and rose from the table as soon as the hand was played, leaving his place to a youngster who had been much more pleasantly employed at the piano. "Well?" he demanded, standing just outside the door, which he had closed behind him. "It's about Miss Laverack, sir. She is not in her room, nor anywhere else in the house, that we can find. Mrs. Rigby, sir, was looking out of doors an hour or so ago, and she saw a figure in a cloak go past Sultan's kennel." Laverack wiped his forehead. "Yes, yes; go on," he said irritably. "Why didn't you tell me before?"