Borlase would have smiled had not Jimmy kept his eye on him with a boldness born of the suspicion that he might. And after all what was there to smile at? Jimmy Chapman was a fine little lad, and it was his realisation of the powers of darkness in the person of a drunkard and blasphemer that peopled the moor for him with the supernatural. When Hartas Kendrew was down in delirium tremens as the result of a drinking bout, his invoking the devil and his agencies was so real an element in the life of the pitmen at the Mires that his ravings must generate belief--however reluctant--in the probability of fiends and bogies responding. Had the Mires been a respectable hamlet and its pit population one of healthy morals and God-fearing principles, the midnight moor would have had no terrors, for good would have had the predominance over evil. The mould which makes us is circumstance. Borlase knew it had made Kit Kendrew a poacher when his wife fell ill of fever. To the epigram that 'nothing is certain but the unforeseen' he thought there might be added 'or more powerful.' It had been so in Kit's case. Up to the time of his marriage he had been a wild lad, suspected of more and graver trespasses than were traced home to him, but also open-handed and kind-hearted. Those who abhorred Hartas as evil to the core and unredeemable, cast many a kind thought on Kit; he would get into trouble if only from his daring spirit, and it would be a thousand pities. When he married, many prophesied that it would be the saving of him. Priscilla was nurse-maid at Old Lafer and a good steady girl. But she lost her baby and fell ill when a hard winter was at its hardest. There was no coal-mining to be done, for the moors were snow-bound. Kit loved her passionately and nursed her devotedly. He was aghast to find that tea and porridge would not bring her round to health. Delicacies were ordered, she must have strengthening diet. Every circumstance was just at that time against honesty.