Day was just breaking as he reached the edge of the moor. He tethered his horse to the stump of an old tree behind a hedge. He had brought a powerful field-glass in his pocket. He scanned the moor carefully through it before proceeding farther on his quest. No living being was in sight anywhere. Satisfied of this, he set out without further delay, leaving his horse by itself to await his return. Not without a tremor—not without a faster beating of the heart—did he again set foot on the moor. A drizzling rain now began to fall, but Kester was not sorry for this. The worse the weather, the fewer the people who would be abroad in it. Onward he strode, keeping a wary eye about him as he went. At length he reached a curve in the path from whence he ought to be able to discern the bulky form of John Skeggs, Esq., if that gentleman was still where he had last seen him. He looked, but the morning was still heavy and dark: he could see nothing. Then he adjusted his glass, and looking through that he could just make out a heap—a bundle—a shapeless something. It required a powerful effort on his part to brace his nerves to the pitch requisite to carry him through the task he had still before him. He had filled a small flask with brandy, and he now drank some of it. Then he started again. A few minutes more and the end of his journey was reached. There lay Skeggs, on the very spot where he had left him, resting on his side, with one hand under his head, as if asleep. His hat had fallen off. On the ground near him were the empty bottle, his walking-stick, and his broken wooden leg. Numbed by the intense cold, he had fallen asleep while waiting for the help which was never to come, and had so died, frozen to death. Doubtless his death had been a painless one, but none the less, as he himself would have said, was Kester St. George his murderer. Gloved though he was, it was not without a feeling of indescribable loathing that Kester could bring himself to touch the body. But it was absolutely necessary to do so. The paper he had come in quest of was in the breast pocket of the dead man’s coat. It did not take him long to find it. Having made sure that he had got the right document, he fastened it up in the breast pocket of his own coat. “Now I am safe!” he said to himself. Then he took off his gloves and buried them carefully under a large stone. Then with one last glance at the body, he slunk hurriedly away, cursing in his heart the daylight that was now creeping up so rapidly from the east. In the clear light of dawn the foul deed he had done looked a thousand times fouler than it had looked before. CHAPTER IX. WHAT TO DO NEXT?