In ten more minutes he was in the saddle. In accordance with Mr. Ellerslie's promise, a serving-man on horseback was in readiness to show him the way as far as the Whinbarrow road. He did not part from Mrs. Dobson without asking her to convey to her master his warmest thanks for the hospitality which had been extended to him; nor did he forget to press a guinea into her palm, reluctant though she was to take it. As he turned away from the house he gave it a long backward look. It was a two-storied domicile, plain to the verge of ugliness, built of roughly-hewn blocks of the dark gray stone of the country. Its walls were of great thickness, and it was roofed with huge slabs of slate, well fitted to withstand the fierce gales which assailed it during the winter months. It stood alone in the centre of a great plateau of stony, desolate moorland, which spread away on every side till it was lost in the distance. No other homestead or sign of man's occupancy or vicinage was anywhere visible. A narrow rutted lane, originally, no doubt, nothing more than a sheep track, passed close by it, seemingly coming from nowhere and leading to nowhere. Frank Nevill shuddered as he looked. What must it be like, he asked himself, to live there in winter? What man in his proper senses would think of building a house on such a spot? And yet Mr. Cope-Ellerslie seemed well satisfied to live there! After traversing the lane for a matter of three or four miles, Frank and his conductor emerged on one of the great highways running due north and south. Crossing this, they found themselves after a little while in a tangle of country roads, among which a stranger would infallibly have lost himself. Frank's guide, however, evidently knew every foot of the way, and at the end of a couple of hours, at a point where the cross-road they had been traversing debouched into one much wider, he pulled up his horse and said: "This is the Whinbarrow road, sir; six miles straight ahead will bring you to Dunthale Prior. Do you wish me to go any further with you, sir?" They were almost the first words the man had spoken, and Frank, as in honor bound, had refrained from putting any questions to him. He now dismissed him with thanks and a little present for himself. Twenty minutes later he drew rein and dismounted at the first toll-bar, at which place it had been arranged that John Dyce should await his arrival. And there honest John was, and a glad man was he to set eyes again on his young mistress. Never before had he passed so wretched a night. Fear and anxiety had rendered him half crazy, and had put all thought of sleep out of his head.