The stranger took his candle and slowly mounted the stairs. As he went, he muttered softly to himself, "Such isolation--it is fatuous--it is magnificent. I have come to the right kind of place. Gossips, of course; but so there are everywhere. Do I know Miller Rotherson from the low country? Ha, ha!" A draught at the stair-head blew out his candle, but the door of his room stood open, and a flood of moonlight came across the landing to show the way. He did not trouble to relight the candle, but clashed the door to after him and went to the uncurtained window. He had a clear view across the moors; one after another the dark rises swept to the broken sky-line, striding the misty hollows, till his eye caught that queer sense of _endlessness_ which the moor people know from their birth. His face went grey as he watched, and through the greyness leaped a wild expectancy. Like a boy this man of forty stretched out his arms to the heath, and talked as if it had ears to hear him. "Janet--I wonder if you're there. In the heart of the moor, you told me--it must be down in one of those white hollows." Then he paused, and his voice went out again in one yearning cry of "Janet!" The stranger pulled himself together. He laughed bitterly, as men do who have once safely passed these things and find it hard to have to go back again. Then he kicked off his boots, undressed, and lay for an hour on his back, watching the moon through the window. _One_ boomed from Marshcotes church, and every hollow of the moors seemed to catch the sound, to pass it on, till the heath was to the already dozing man one everlasting succession of striking clocks. "Get to sleep, you fool!" he muttered drowsily. "Curse the bells--they sound uncanny; it'll be long before they ring for _that_ wedding. God knows she's taken the heart clean out of my body--_one_, _one_, _one_; curse the bells!" CHAPTER V. CONCERNING PARSLEY AND STRONG DRINK. At eight of the next evening, Griff Lomax was surprised by a visit from the preacher--surprised, because only a few hours ago they had parted at the end of a long ride together. Gabriel wore an air of clumsy craftiness which sat laughably ill upon him. "It's time you paid your respects at the mill, don't you think?" he said, shifting from foot to foot. "Oh, the wind blows there, does it?" laughed Griff, noting that the preacher's face was more carefully shaven than usual, and that he wore a shirt of fine linen. "I know them, Griff, and you don't. It seems but neighbourly to go together." "You saw her this afternoon, I fancy? Gabriel, boy, you're in a bad way. I have work to do; can't you wait till to-morrow?" Lomax was in a teasing humour, and refused to take the preacher's--or any other--matters seriously. "Well, of course--if you can't come," murmured Gabriel, with crestfallen looks. "He can come, Gabriel; and, what is more, I shall see that he does," said Mrs. Lomax, who had entered unobserved.