"Heaven only knows. Years ago she ought to have died; years ahead she may be living. And meanwhile my little darling is killing herself by inches." Again that quick, sharp sigh from Griff. "Killing herself by inches?" he repeated. "Yes, damn you! why play the parrot to a beggarly statement of fact?" Griff threw a couple of peats on a fire that needed no replenishing. "Well," he said, settling back into his seat, "let us put away our worries, old man; we're getting morbid. Perhaps a talk about old times will do us good." Roddick failed to notice a something that lay very near to the surface of the other's apparent carelessness; after chatting of this and that, he began to nod, then to doze; until finally he was sleeping as soundly as if there were no perplexities to be faced on the morrow. But Griff had no inclination to sleep. He sat there, watching now the live peats, now his friend's face. As the dawn crept white over the white snow, he went quickly from the house towards a cottage called Bents Foot. CHAPTER XXXI. THE MOOR MAN GOES OUT TO HIS OWN. At the top of the rise that overlooked Wynyates, the chimney-stack of Bents Foot stood out, black and rigid as a funeral mute, against the grey-white of the sky. Griff plodded his way through the snow, till he stood at the cottage window. A figure was standing inside, its queer, distorted face pressed close against the glass. He motioned towards the door, and the figure fell back a little, so that he could no longer see anything more than a faint shadow moving up and down in the twilight of the room. He tried the door, and found it locked, as he had expected. But he felt no impatience; he only stood and looked out over the snow-sea, wondering at his calm and thinking it sanity. After awhile he heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. Roddick's wife crept out, and came and peered into his face. "What do you want? Have you come to take me to Leo?" she mumbled. "No." "Then you can go away. I must find him myself." She, too, looked across the waste of snow, and shivered. "It's only a little way off, but the road is hid. I might fall in the snow and die; and Leo, for all his rough ways, would break his heart if he lost me." She was in one of her cringeing moods; her words came ramblingly, and dropped with the helpless fall of a withered leaf. "He'd break his heart if he lost me," she wailed. "So he would," said Griff, with equal gravity. "Wait till he comes for you. I'll stay with you, if you'll give me something to drink." Her eyes brightened as she clutched at his arm. "Drink? How can I give you drink, when he--he, and she, the woman in there--lock it all up out of reach?" "We can soon alter that. What's the nurse doing?" She rubbed her hands together and chuckled softly. "Fast asleep. After Leo went, her eyes were too tired to keep open. It isn't often _she_ goes to sleep."