She noticed that twilight was drawing swiftly down. In half an hour it would be night, and the clouds were already settling lower on the fells, so that the horrors of loneliness and darkness would be doubled by the bewildering presence of the mist. But she had not time to think just now of how she would get home. She must flee anywhere; she must escape from Joel, who was acting and speaking as though he had gone suddenly mad. Girdlestone Pass provided plenty of hiding places if she could only succeed in baffling him. She cast her eyes swiftly over the landscape. She must not take to the hillside--it was too steep and rough for her to hope to elude him there; she would betray herself by falling, if she did not come to a crag that she could not climb. The moorland on the left, with it brown hummocks, scrub, and mossy stones, would provide her with a surer means of escape. She never thought of Quaking Hag, she did not know where it lay, for she had rarely been in the pass before. She wondered once if she should scream, but it was unlikely that anyone would hear her. The Shepherd's Rest was too far off, and travellers rarely passed that way. Every minute the dusk deepened, Joel had shifted his hand to her arm, when he found that she ceased to resist him. He was peering forward, trying to see the horse which he had tied to a tree so that it might be in readiness. Then Lucy bent down, and set her teeth in his hand. He gave a sharp exclamation, loosened his grasp, and she fled from him into the shadows. CHAPTER XXIII A PATHWAY OF FIRE The night was dark, no star shone, and, though the moon had risen, it could not penetrate the clouds, which hung over the sky, and rested on the mountain tops. There was just enough light to show how wild and lonely was the pack-horse track through Girdlestone Pass. About nine o'clock Barbara came along it. She walked as a shepherd walks, who has many miles to travel, and must not grow weary. She did not hurry, neither did she dally nor halt, but kept up an even pace, regardless of the dips and rises in the road. She was returning from a distant farm, whither she had carried the Need Fire, and where the good folk had waited all the afternoon, the cattle folded near the house, and a pile, like a haystack, of green wood ready to be lit, when the sacred element--for such they regarded it--should be brought from Boar Dale. They had given up all hope of receiving it that night, when, about seven o'clock, a loud knock came to the door, and Barbara Lynn stood there, with the smouldering embers in a cauldron. Now she was returning, but not by the way she had come, over a shoulder of Thundergay, for there was no track to guide her, and the mist and darkness hid the familiar landmarks; so she struck the road through Girdlestone Pass instead, meaning to reach Greystones by the round-about way of the Robber's Rake.