He changed his clothes and went down to dinner. Both his uncle and Richard Dering were away, and he dined alone, for which he was by no means sorry. Every half-hour or so he inquired as to the weather. They had nothing to tell him except that it was still snowing hard. The evening was one of slow torture, but at length it wore itself away. He went to bed about midnight. Dobbs’s last report to him was that the weather was still unchanged. But several times during the night Dobbs heard his master pacing up and down his room, and had he been there he might, ever and again, have seen a haggard face peering out with eager eyes into the darkness. “Twelve inches of snow, sir, on the drive,” was Dobbs’s first news next morning. “They say there has not been a fall like it in these parts for a dozen years.” The snow had ceased to fall hours before. By-and-by there came a few gleams of sunshine to brighten the scene, but the wind was still in the north, and all that day the weather kept bitterly cold. Soon after sunset, however, there was a change. Little by little the wind got round to the south-west. At ten o’clock Dobbs reported: “Snow going fast, sir. Regular thaw. Not be a bit left by breakfast-time.” “Call me at four,” said his master, “and have some coffee ready, and a horse brought round by four thirty.” He was quite tired out by this time, and when he went to bed he felt sure that he should have four or five hours’ sound sleep. But his sleep was several times disturbed by a strange dream: always the same thing repeated over and over again. He dreamt that he was standing under the finger-post on the edge of the moor. But the finger-post was neither more nor less than a gigantic skeleton, of which the outstretched arms formed the direction boards. On the bony palm of one outstretched arm, in letters of blood, was written the words: “To Sedgeley.” Then as he read the words in his dream, again would sound in his ears the low, weird, melancholy cry which had arrested his steps for a moment as he walked home through the snow, and hearing the cry he would start up in bed and stare round him, and wonder for a moment where he was. Dobbs duly called his master at four, and at four thirty he mounted his horse and rode away. The roads were heavy and sloppy with the melting snow. The morning was intensely dark, but Kester knew the country thoroughly, and was never at a loss as to which turn he ought to take. Not one human being did he meet during the whole of his ride. But, indeed, his nearest friend would have passed him by in the dark without recognition. He wore an old shooting suit, with a Glengarry bonnet and a macintosh, and had a thick shawl wrapped round his throat and the lower part of his face.