Roddick knew nothing of the story attaching to Frender's Folly, except that the building was almost of yesterday; yet now, as he looked down on that level circle of lawn and shrubbery, with the gloomy pile at its centre, he felt no whit disposed to gibe at the pretentiousness of what he had once termed the Cotton Castle. The sun, a crimson ball, was touching the moor-edge with its lower rim; a grey gloaming crept across the everlasting waste of heath; the wind sobbed piteously. A strip of green, a fringe of naked branches, a broad band of moor, were mirrored dimly in the big lake that stretched to the northern end of the valley. It was all inexpressibly lonesome, terrible beyond words. The sun died wholly, while Roddick crept down the hill-side towards the trysting-place. He awoke from his sense of awe to find that his eyes were wet and his throat troubled. He cursed himself for a fool, but the pity had gripped his heart, for all that; the pathos that underlies all this bluster and wildness of the moors had struck to some inner sense, and made him womanish. He shivered as he stood beneath the grim old fir-tree that had found it hard work enough to stick to its post halfway up the hill-side. A sheep, away above him on the moor, bleated its half-witted protest against the fate that had set it there. If only a good, honest dog would give one good, honest bark, thought Roddick, he would not mind it half as much. But the ungainly brute--half mastiff, half collie--that came creeping up towards the trysting-oak uttered no bark. He crouched close to Roddick's side, and wagged his rope of a tail, and smuggled his head into the man's hand for approbation; but he had been trained to hold his tongue, and he feared rebuke from the girl who followed him a few paces behind. "Janet!" No other word came to Roddick's lips. The tragedy, the desolation, the pathos,--they were all absorbed in that slim, girlish figure whose every line betokened eagerness. Wreck and ruin were chiselled deep into the stones below them; yearning that had no limits, aloofness that dared not seek for sympathy, were above them; but they two were close in each other's arms, and looked neither above nor below. "Leo," she said at last, "was I foolish to drag you so far across the moor?" "Be quiet, child!" "I would have met you nearer Wynyates, but I could not get away for long enough. There is a crowd of people down there, dear, all expecting me to entertain them." "Let them expect," muttered Roddick, gruffly. As of old, he understood the folly of these meetings; the strain was greater than any sane man would subject himself to willingly. "But I shall be missed if I stay here long, and I dread father finding us out; it would put an end to--to all the world, I think, Leo." "Janet!" he said sharply. "Yes?" She looked up, shocked by his tone.