The new moon had long been set, but the stars were bright and the way amid the trees was plain to follow. A pleasant freshness of the early fall was in the faint night breeze and yet a lurking chill, that made Hugh glad to draw his cloak closer and trudge on more briskly. It was not long after midnight when he reached the first cottage on the outskirts of the village of Kingsford; he had passed the cheery little timbered dwelling many a time, but now, muffled in the night, it seemed unfamiliar. As his feet crunched the gravel of the road before the cottage he heard the house dog bark within, and a sudden feeling of being shut out came over him. The dark houses, as he hurried by them, had the awesome blankness of sleeping faces; even in the woods he had not been so lonely as here in Kingsford, where human beings were within call. But as he drew to the end of the straggling village he slackened his pace. The road, ascending slightly here, skirted the churchyard, where he could see the light streak that marked the pathway, and the huddled stones, blacker against the turf. For a moment he rested his arms upon the lich wall and stood gazing across the graves at the dense bulk of the little Norman church, with its side porch overshadowed by a dark yew tree and its square tower cleanly outlined against the starry sky. In the chancel of the church his mother lay buried. She would have approved what he was doing, he told himself; she would gladly have returned to Alan Gwyeth. With every fibre of his resolution newly braced he once more took up his march, down the gentle slope and across the one-arched bridge that spanned the river Arrow. There, with the sound of the hurrying water in his ears, he paused and took a final glance at the tower of Kingsford church, and as he passed on wondered vaguely if he should ever set eyes on it again, and when, and how. Beyond Kingsford the road ran once more through woods with now and again a space of open land or a retired farmhouse. Hugh gave little heed to the country round him, however; he noted only that he had firm road beneath his feet, the cool morning wind in his face, and the stars overhead to light him. But the wind grew chilly and faint with approaching dawn; the stars paled; from far away across the cleared fields a cock crowed and another answered him. When Hugh entered the village next beyond Kingsford, the sky was fading to a dull leaden color and he shivered with the cold of breaking day. Already people were beginning to stir; he met laborers going afield and from roadside barns heard men shouting to cattle, and the bark of dogs. About the little inn there were some signs of life, so he entered and bought bread of a tousled-headed woman. Coming out of the house he saw the eastern sky was breaking into billows of pink, and a little later the cold yellow sun burst forth.