"God in Heaven, man! what have you been doing? Last night you looked wild enough in all conscience, but now----" "Doing?" interrupted Griff. "Something you will approve of, you two. I've tramped across the moor--and a pretty cold moor it is, by the way--to tell you that your wife is dead." They noticed nothing out of the way in his voice or manner of giving the information. The tidings were too great to allow room for any thought of the bearer's looks. "Dead?" cried Roddick. "Yes, dead. I saw her not long ago." Roddick fell back against the mantelpiece. A giddiness came over him. He could move neither hand nor foot, he could not speak, though he realized vaguely that he ought to shake his friend by the hand and give him hearty thanks. But Janet made ample atonement for his remissness. She fell at Griff's feet, and kissed his hands, and named him the dearest man in the world. She was beside herself with joy; she scarcely knew what she was doing. Griff raised the girl and gravely put her away from him. "I killed her," he said, quietly. Roddick stared at him from his place against the mantel-shelf. He had had a stiff fight with conscience not long ago, and the pace of these new developments was altogether too fast for him. Janet shuddered, and put the width of the room between herself and the man whom she had lately named a saviour. "You--killed--her?" she whispered. "Yes. Don't look at me like that. It is a mere nothing." His manner was growing wild. He laughed causelessly at intervals, and seemed to think his story rather humorous than otherwise. "I came last night, you remember, to see if old Roddick here could help me. I was going mad for want of a purpose. I felt like a derelict ship that has been tossing about aimlessly, day after day, week after week. I was willing to give anything to the man who would fit me out with sails and a rudder. Well, I found you, instead of Roddick, and you stood me a true friend--told me there was a woman to be killed--fitted a purpose to my hand at once. God bless you both!" He ceased. Down the side of Roddick's nose a ridiculous tear was creeping, but Griff smiled, with a sort of paternal tenderness, on the two people for whom he had lately performed a trifling service. "Old man!" cried Roddick. His voice was a woman's, inaudible almost in its desperate pity. "Don't trouble about that," put in the other briskly, as if in answer to unspoken words of gratitude. "The least said, the soonest mended. You want to thank me, I know, and talk nonsense generally. I won't have it. Why, man, it's the easiest thing I ever did in my life!" On the sudden his face fell. He gibbered dumbly, like some voiceless ghost. "The moor, the moor," he whispered at last. "How still and white it is. It's not the moor I have known--not the moor I have loved my life through--it seems to shudder."