For a little while they jogged along side by side without speaking. The tract of country they were traversing was wild and desolate in the extreme. On every side stretched the bare swelling moorland--bare save for the short sparse grass and the many-hued mosses which grew in its hollows and more sheltered places, but left naked its huge ribs and bosses of granite, which showed through the surface in every direction, and seemed to crave the decent burial which only some great cataclysm of nature could give them. Here and there at wide intervals a narrow track-way unwound itself like a dusky ribbon till it was lost in the distance. These rude by-roads had been in use for more centuries than history or tradition knew of, and served to connect one outlying hamlet with another. Over them from time to time paced great droves of cattle and sheep on their way to one or other of the frequent fairs which in those days, far more than now, brought the country-side together and formed one of the most distinctive features of English rural life. "Here we are at last," said the highwayman, as an indefinite mass of black buildings loomed vaguely before them--for the rain was over and gone, and the moon was again shining in a clear sky--which presently, as they drew nearer, took on the shape of a long, low, two-storied house, with a high-pitched roof and twisted chimneys, and having a group of detached outbuildings in the rear. As they reined in their horses a few yards from the low wall, which enclosed a space of rank and untended shrubbery, the younger horseman saw, not without a sense of misgiving, that the whole front of the house was in darkness. Not the faintest glimmer of light was anywhere visible. "And do you mean to tell me," he asked in a low voice, for a sense of night and darkness was upon him, "that this desolate and out-of-the-world spot is any one's home?" "It is the home of Mr. Cope-Ellerslie, as I have already remarked." "How far away is Mr. Ellerslie's nearest neighbor?" "Four good miles, as the crow flies. But he is a recluse and a student, and the loneliness of Rockmount was probably his main inducement for becoming its tenant." "In any case, we are too late to-night to claim his hospitality. There is not a light anywhere visible." "You mean that there's none to be seen from where we are standing," retorted the highwayman dryly. "But that's no proof Mr. Ellerslie's abed. He's a genuine nightbird, and often does not go to roost before daybreak, so busy is he over his studies of one kind or another." At another time the younger man might have wondered how his law-breaking companion had acquired such an intimate knowledge of the habits of the recluse of Rockmount, but just then he had other things to think about. "Follow me," said the highwayman, and with that he walked his horse round a corner of the house, to where a large bow window, invisible before, bulged out from the main building.