"He's mad," said the pack-master, indicating the kitchen with his whip. The kind old face looked distressed. "A hint in your ear, master," and the man bent down and whispered, "murder." "No, no, you're mistaken. He's just excited and has been drinking too much." "It's murder! I saw it in his face. If School-master Peter is a wise man he'll go school-mastering to another place, and take his wife with him." Red Geordie mounted his horse, and rode off saying: "I ken what's what in the man's face. I don't ride the pack roads for nowt, master." CHAPTER XX THE SPELL OF THUNDERGAY The winter was one of storms. They rose suddenly towards evening, and continued intermittently throughout the night, with long, strange pauses between each, until the dawn of the next morning, when the sun got up amid bars of yellow and purple cloud. But the glory of sunrise was brief. The days were cold, short, and grey, and when darkness fell the wind howled as though nature were in a fury bordering upon madness. The silences, too, which fell so suddenly, when the storm was at its highest, seemed to indicate periods of exhaustion, like those which follow upon the unbridled passions of human beings. In the bleak and solitary dale, where the farm of Greystones stood, there was little light till noon, for the mountain-wall surrounding it, kept out the rays of the sun; and Thundergay, at its head, poured a current of raw air into the hollow filling it with mist, through which the wild geese called mournfully, and the sheep wandered, too depressed to bleat, but seeking always for sustenance among the loose rocks and beds of scree. Once a day their scanty meal was supplemented by a feast of holly twigs which Barbara or the hind cut for them. They knew the time by instinct, and, half an hour before, might be seen travelling along the dale from all directions, and gathering round the thicket where the hollies grew. This winter Mistress Annas Lynn began to feel the cold, and another woollen rug was put on the bed. She spent most of the day in keeping herself warm, and her usual occupation of knitting ceased. She did not sleep much, and often Barbara would tip-toe to the bedside to see if her great-grandmother were awake, and would find the bright eyes open, and raised to her face in an instant, with a keen searching look. But she spoke little, and appeared to find plenty of interest in her own thoughts. Strange thoughts they must have been, which passed through a mind so strong, individual, and so old. But at night when the door was shut, the curtains drawn, the fire bright, she would sit up in bed and talk of the days long past, and times that were rude, but full of a spirit that kept the brain alive and made the flesh glow.