Mistress Lynn was not asleep; like Lucy, she was thinking of the past. The years that were gone came back to her in a long, long train. From childhood, from her earliest memory, she followed events up through girlhood to wifehood and widowhood, and here at last she had come from the cradle to the four-poster, from having been a golden-haired bairn to be a bedridden old woman. It seemed hardly believable the way in which the years had gone. Yet the old clock, ticking in the corner, had marked off the moments of her existence with a relentless hand. Often it had been her solitary companion through long and wakeful nights, and she had listened to it, and watched its white face flicker with the firelight, never thinking that it was a stern angel, telling out the passing of her years. As she passed her life in review, she thought that she had few regrets. The last one--the failure of Joel Hart to fulfil her hopes for him--soon fell away from her mind. She was too old to trouble any more about the cross-purposes of other people's lives. Still, she would like to have seen him again. Though she would have bitterly resented had any stain been put upon her name, perhaps, at the back of her old brain, she felt that, had his grandfather asked her to flee with him, she would have gone, so great was her love--and made herself strong enough, and brave enough, to take the consequences, and never cast a look behind. Joel Hart had not gone away. He had meant to go, day after day, but had not had the resolution to carry out his intentions. He spent the dreary time at Forest Hall in vain longings, and in reviving his hate for Peter. He did not go out, but did his best to empty his wine-cellar. At last, however, he made up his mind, and told Mally Ray that he would ride off, as he had come home, in the dusk of early morning. The night before, a restless spirit took him into the dale. He thought that he would look at it for the last time. He wandered along, keeping to the same track as that which Lucy had taken when she went to meet him in Girdlestone Pass. He came across no one: those whose business took them to the hills managed to get it done before twilight fell, and sensible folk sat by their fires, having no inclination to wander about in the snow unless they must. From the other side of the beck he looked at Greystones. He saw the light suddenly shine out when Lucy lit the candles, then as suddenly disappear when she put up the shutters.