An hour later Nancy’s baby was born and news spread through the village that the mother’s life was despaired of. The event had not been expected so soon, but there was plenty of competent help available, and it was not the midwife’s inefficiency that caused the old doctor, who had been summoned by telegraph, to shake his head. “Where’s the father?” he inquired. “Tell him I want him, sharp.” Keturah hastened to the workshop, but found only Baldwin whom she could not waken from a drunken sleep. Hannah ran home to ask her brother to seek him. “He’s not in t’ ‘Packhorse,’” she gasped. “Go fetch him, lad. It’s for poor Nancy’s sake!” “And bridle your tongue and temper!” said Maniwel. “If you’ll take the moor road, I’ll walk down Kirkby way.” Just beyond Baldwin’s workshop Jack Pearce caught Jagger’s arm. “Are you after Inman?” he asked; and putting his lips to the other’s ear whispered something that caused Jagger to fling off the detaining hand and clench his fists. “Are you sure, Jack? As certain as there’s a God in heaven if I catch him at that game I’ll lay him out!” “I’d like to help you at that job,” said Jack; “but I’m best away. I’m dirt in her eyes. If I caught ’em together there’d be murder done, though he could pay me wi’ one hand.” “He can’t me!” said Jagger grimly; and he strode away into the darkness. It was not really dark, for in September day lingers on the uplands to chat with night; but there are gloomy places in the shadows of the great hills which those who love the light are careful to avoid. It was towards one of these that Jagger hurried with a fierce anger at his heart that made him oblivious of everything except his mission, and even that was obscured by the deeper purpose of punishment. Of punishment—not revenge. Nancy lay dying, perhaps by this time was already dead; and the man who ought to have been at hand in the emergency: the man whose quick brain might have suggested something, however impossible or futile: the father of the child who was to lose its mother; was indulging in an amour with another woman—a child whose hair until a few months ago was hanging down her back. Mountain linnets rose from their nests in alarm as his feet crunched the stiff grass. A couple of gulls wheeled over his head. Even in the dim light the moor was rich in colour, and the mantle night had thrown down upon it could not wholly hide the madder-brown of the soil that peeped out in patches from amidst the orange and crimson bushes, the russet-red fronds of dead bracken, and the sober array of grasses, straw-coloured and green. If this riot of subdued colour failed to reach Jagger’s perceptions it was because a warmer tint was before his eyes—he was “seeing red.”