But Joe, in his own way, was as desperate as Griff. He was a beggar, and likely to remain so; his body was a worn-out machine, and work of any kind seemed little short of torture. And then he had nursed that feud of his till it had grown into a mania. The fight on the moor came to him to-night--the fight in which he had had his knife close at Griff's throat. There should be no mistake this time. And so, while the snow fell ever thicker, these two, Lomax and Strangeways, went hither and thither across the moor, one in search of the other. Only the tallest heather-plants kept their heads above ground, and even they were bound to go under soon. Nothing stirred but the flakes, and these had a ghastly dumbness. Joe came to Sorrowstones Spring at last, and cowered under the highroad wall, a field's-length off from his cottage. "Hell alive, it's fit to rot a man's heart in his body, is wark on a neet like this!" he muttered. "If he'd nobbut come afore my fingers are stark an' stiff!" He handled the crowbar lovingly, and began to talk to it. First he confided to it what he was set on doing, and then, as the waiting grew more tedious, he told it all that had gone before--dilating on Kate's beauty, their happiness before Griff came to spoil it, his lonely after-life, with only drink to sweeten it. And to all this the slim, two-foot crowbar listened patiently; but it was cold in his grasp when he began, and cold when his story was done. It seemed callous to all claims of sympathy. The cold and the beer between them sent Joe off into a fit of dizziness. He leaned hard against the wall to recover himself, and laughed thickly to the little iron bar. "It's gooid hot blood we want, my beauty, thee an' me--thee to warm thy heart, an' me to warm my belly. Well, lass, we'll bide a bit longer; he can't be such a fearful while i' coming now.--What's that?" Away up the road, far beyond the last of the stoups that could be seen from Sorrowstones, there sounded a faint _pit-pat_. On it came--_pit-pat, pit-pat_--the muffled beat of hoofs, striking through the snow to the frozen underground. Joe moved from his sheltering wall. His sickness was forgotten, his crowbar passively awaited commands. Out of the whirling whiteness came a man and a horse, creeping warily down the steepest bit of the hill. The road ran between high banks of ling and bents, and on the right bank the quarrymaster waited. Nearer and nearer came the two figures; they moved from side to side of the road, to lessen the steepness of the descent, until at last they passed close to where Strangeways was cowering in the snow. Like a flash Joe sprang at his victim, and brought the crowbar down on his skull.