"I give it up, old chap. Come home to bed, I tell you." Griff threaded his arm through Hirst's, and led him, steadier on his feet now and meek as a lamb, to his own door. Latches were unknown in Ling Crag, but the preacher always carried the door-key with him; he was often abroad at nights, and neither Betty Binns nor her husband, who slept in the house, could be expected to wait up for him at these times. Gabriel Hirst made two or three ineffectual assaults on the door, then handed the key to Lomax. "Griff," he said, with unsober cunning, "I'm a sinful man, and vengeance shall come like a thief in the night--but I shouldn't like Betty to hear. Help me to bed, Griff, for old times' sake." When Lomax came out into the moonlight again, after locking up the house and pushing Gabriel's key under the mat, the smile on his lips was a tender one. "The pace is a bit swift for old Gabriel nowadays," he muttered. "He's been drunk for the first time in his life, and in love for the first time. It will do him good in the long run, because there's solid bottom under that hysterical piety of his. But, Lord, what a time of retribution he will make for himself!" He strolled along the highroad in the direction of Wynyates: the night was calm, and he felt in no humour to return. Greta and her queer, two-sided lover slipped gradually from his mind, and Kate Strangeways, his treasure-trove, took their place. His pulses quickened, with a passion that was entirely artistic; this moor woman, as he saw her now, was a being wonderful, remote, magnificent; he almost feared to handle her, lest he should spoil her in the drawing. Yet he must certainly ask her to sit to him, whether he made the best of his chances or not. He turned at last and started home at a brisk pace. At the door of the Dog and Grouse he espied the landlord, swallowing a mouthful of fresh air before he turned in for the night. "Good night to you, Mr. Lummax," called Jack o' Ling Crag. "Hallo, Jack! I thought you'd be in bed long ago." "Well, so I should be, sir, in a orn'ary sort o' way. But things hes been happening, sir--such things as keep a plain man out o' bed thinking on 'em." Griff cocked his head a little on one side, and gave Jack a look which suggested that some kind of Freemasonry existed between them. "Have you been taking a little midnight exercise, Jack? I feared they'd catch one or both of us many a time last year." Jack o' Ling Crag gurgled complacently. "Nay, now, Mr. Lummax, is it likely 'at they'd nobble an owd bird like me wi' gamekeeper chaff? It's all right, I says, an' none 'ud deny it, that chaps like Dick the Cobbler should be cotched: they're green hands meeting green hands--for all th' owd lot o' keepers, an' a smart set they war, is gone--an' it's a toss up whether it ends in th' coort-house for Dicky an' his mates, or i' broken heäds for th' keepers. But me--Lord, sir, I thowt ye knew me better nor to go thinking owt o' that sort!"