‘Curse you!’ he thought. ‘Wish I’d sold you six months ago!’ The wind fleered and mowed in the tree tops; and he started off again at a run in that dark wilderness; till, hitting his head against a low branch, he fell, stunned. He lay several minutes unconscious, came to himself deadly cold, and struggled up on to his feet. ‘By Jove!’ he thought, with a sort of stammer in his brain; ‘this is a bad business! I may be out here all night!’ For an unimaginative man, it was extraordinary what vivid images he had just then. He saw the face of the Government official who had bought his timber, and the slight grimace with which he had agreed to the price. He saw his butler, after the gong had gone, standing like a stuck pig by the sideboard, waiting for him to come down. What would they do when he didn’t come? Would they have the _nous_ to imagine that he might have lost his way in the coverts, and take lanterns and search for him? Far more likely they would think he had walked over to Greenlands or Berrymoor, and stayed there to dinner. And, suddenly, he saw himself slowly freezing out here, in the snowy night, among this cursed timber. With a vigorous shake, he butted again into the darkness among the tree trunks. He was angry now--with himself, with the night, with the trees; so angry that he actually let out with his fist at a trunk against which he had stumbled, and scored his knuckles. It was humiliating; and Sir Arthur Hirries was not accustomed to humiliation. In anybody else’s wood--yes; but to be lost like this in one’s own coverts! Well, if he had to walk all night, he would get out! And he plunged on doggedly in the darkness.