‘Please, sir, I durstn’t. It be night and it’s whisht[2] over the moor.’ ‘Then leave it, and I will send someone else, and you will lose your lover.’ ‘What do you want me to do, sir? I wouldn’t have that neither.’ ‘Then run to Tavistock, and tell Joseph Woodman to communicate at once with the warder of the Prince’s Town jail, and bid him bring sufficient men with him, and come here, and I will deliver into their hands a runaway convict, a man who broke out of jail not long ago.’ ‘Please, sir, where is he? Lawk, sir! What if he were on the moor as I went over it?’ ‘Never mind where he is. I will produce him at the right moment. Above all—Jane—remember this, not a word of what I have said to Mr. Jasper or to Miss Barbara. Go secretly, and go at once. Hush! Here she comes.’ Barbara entered. ‘A light is in his window,’ she said. Then her father laughed, and shut his hands. ‘So,’ he muttered, ‘so I shall snap him. When her father was composed, and seemed inclined to sleep, Barbara left his room, and went out of the house. She needed to be by herself. Her bosom heaved. She had so much to think of, so many troubles had come upon her, the future was dark, the present uncertain. If she were in the house she would not be able to enjoy that quiet for which she craved, in which to compose the tumult of her heart, and arrange her ideas. There she was sure to be disturbed: a maid would ask for a duster, or another bunch of candles; the cook would send to announce that the chimney of the kitchen was out of order, the soot or mortar was falling down it; the laundrymaid would ask for soap; Eve would want to be amused. Every other minute she would have some distracting though trifling matter forced on her. She must be alone. Her heart yearned for it. She would not go to the Rock, the association with it was painful. It was other with the moor, Morwell Down, open to every air, without a tree behind which an imp might lurk and hoot and make mows. Accordingly, without saying a word to anyone, Barbara stole along the lane to the moor. That was a sweet summer night. The moon was not yet risen, the stars were in the sky, not many, for the heaven was not dark, but suffused with lost sunlight. To the east lay the range of Dartmoor mountains, rugged and grey; to the west, peaked and black against silver, the Cornish tors. But all these heights on this night were scintillating with golden moving spots of fire. The time had come for what is locally called ‘swaling,’ that is, firing the whinbrakes. In places half a hill side was flaked with red flame, then it flared yellow, then died away. Clouds of smoke, tinged with fire reflection from below, rolled away before the wind. When the conflagration reached a dense and tall tree-like mass of gorse the flame rose in a column, or wavered like a golden tongue. Then, when the material was exhausted and no contiguous brake continued the fire, the conflagration ended, and left only a patch of dull glowing scarlet ember.