She told the housekeeper to have a bedchamber prepared for a lady visitor, and heedless of her exclamations of wonder, directed her to send Symonds at a quarter to six to the railway station with the carriage, and to take whatever strangers were for the castle as secretly home as possible, so that no one in the village should know who they were. "Lawk-a-mercy!" ejaculated Mrs. Chetwode, "what's Seven Oak a coming to! A body would think you was going to hide away a murderer, Miss Margaret dear." "Not to hide away a murderer, but to discover one!" muttered the girl, turning from the colloquy. She had two hours to wait for the coming of Lady Juliana, and she must live through the dreary time somehow, so, weary of the silence of the castle, she flung a large dark mantle about her, and went out for a walk upon the Waaste. It was nearing the shortest day of the year, and the early twilight was already setting over the distant hill and forest. The dun leaves, heaped high under the oaks of the front park, were white with hoary frost, crackled like paper under her feet, and, starting with every sound, she soon quitted the shadows of the trees, and paced over the sere turf down to the inky mere, where the long, brown flags pricked up in paper-like spikes, and the dank rushes pierced the filmy ices at the margin of the water, and the hazel shrubs clustered close about the slippery banks, and hid them from the Waaste. She walked round and round in this dreary spot, while the dusk grew darker, and the frost fell whiter on her foot-prints; and, when fatigue began to demand rest, she chose a seat on the gnarled root of a giant willow, whose branches swept the ground on every side, or dipped into the mere at her feet. She became completely absorbed in her thoughts, but presently a distant pattering, like rain upon the dry foliage, recalled her, with a disagreeable start. She opened the branches of her yellow-leaf screen and looked about. Nearer came the pattering steps, slow and soft; then she heard a long sniff, and a swifter pattering of the coming feet. Her heart stood still with horror. She saw a long, lean blood-hound leap into view, and circle slowly round the mere, his nose on the ground, his blood-shot eyes flaming through the dusk. _The colonel's sleuth-hound tracking her steps!_ With what helpless fascination she watched the animal gliding like a phantom round and round, down to the lip of the mere, where she had bent to pluck a stalk, diverging a pace when she had diverged. And behind the dog came Colonel Brand, with hands clasping each other by the wrists, and drooping figure, and head down on his breast, shuffling his dragging feet among the withered gorse as if weights held them down brooding along with the heavy and spiritless gait of an old man, or of one whose shoulders have been bowed thus by labor.