It was because he fancied that Miss Willis was impatiently awaiting the moment for separating for the night, that Jasper chose to delay it; but at length the time came when the good-nights had been exchanged, and the drawing-room was abandoned. Captain Denzil’s room, which adjoined the picture-gallery on the first-floor, was immediately beneath that occupied by the Indian orphan. Repeatedly, after he reached it, did Jasper fancy that he heard a light swift step overhead, as if Sir Sykes’s ward were hurrying to and fro; and then his sharpened ear caught the sound of a stealthy tread upon the oaken staircase. Extinguishing the lights for the time being, Captain Denzil threw open his window, which overlooked the park; and by the time his eyes grew somewhat accustomed to the darkness, he saw, or thought he saw, a female form glide from under the black shadow of the giant sycamores and flit bat-like away through the solitary gloom. ‘If it were not for this provoking arm,’ said the captain, who was still, despite the skilful care of worthy little Dr Aulfus from Pebworth, suffering less from his hurts than from the Nemesis that dogs the steps of the hard-liver, ‘I’d win the odd trick to-night. But if I can’t follow to see who it is that she meets, at anyrate I shall get a second peep at yonder ingenuous creature when she comes back. A rare moonless night it is for such an errand!’ Jasper’s eyes had not deceived him. It was Ruth whose slight figure had passed away into the deepening shadows of the night, crossing the park towards its northern boundary, which abutted upon the broken country leading to the royal forest, treeless, but none the less in sound law the forest of Dartmoor. It was so dark that even one better accustomed to the locality might have failed to keep to the right course among narrow and grass-grown paths, many of them trodden by no human foot, but by the cloven hoofs of the deer trooping down to pool or pasture. Yet Ruth threaded her devious way past holt and thicket, past pond and hollow, almost as well as the oldest keeper on the estate would have done, and presently gained the gate which, as has been already remarked, stood always open on the northern side of the park, corresponding to that on the southern or seaward side, for, as has been said, the public had an ancient right or user to traverse Carbery Chase. But as a right of ingress for men might imply a right of egress for deer, some zigzag arrangement of iron bars had been set up, screen-like, at either extremity of the footpath, and this effectually restrained the roving propensities of the antlered herd within. ‘So—you are late, Ruth! I have kicked about here, till I began to think you’d thrown me over. No wonder, living among fine folks, that you’re getting to care little how long a rough fellow like yours to command is kept on the look-out.’