A soft wind was fluttering from the edge of dark. The moon lay like a silver sickle over Dead Lad’s Rigg, watching the fading banners of the sunset go down beneath the dark red-purple of the heath. No bird piped, save the ever-moaning curlew; the reeds whispered one to another, nodding their sleepy heads together; the voice of waters distant and of waters near at hand sobbed drearily. Over all was the masterful silence of the sky, that dread and mighty stillness of the star-spaces where the hill-gods stretched tired limbs and slumbered. Full of infinite sweets was the breeze, and the scent of heather mingled with the damp, heart-saddening odour of marsh-weeds and of bog-mosses. The Lean Man, prone in the heather with his eyes on the dying sunset, felt every subtle influence of the hour. His life’s grand failure had been compassed, the first and last deep terror had laid its grip on him; the wide moor, which had spoken of freedom once, was narrowed now to a prison, whose walls of sky were creeping close and closer in upon him. Man-like, he clothed his own dead passions—his love of fight, his pitiless lust for vengeance—with all the majesty of larger nature; man-like, he thought the moor’s face darkened for his own tragedy, that even the curlews thrilled with something of his own intimate and tearless sorrow. What was this ghoul that had come, naught out of nothingness, and chilled the life-blood in him? It was a phantom, yet a hard reality—a thing of unclean vapours, yet stronger than if it had plied a giant’s sword with more than a giant’s strength of arm. Near must all men come, once in their lifetime, to that deep horror of brain and heart when they stand, less and greater than their manhood, at the gulf-edge which lies between them and the space that fathered them. The Lean Man was peering over the gulf to-night, and the soul of him was naked to the moor-wind. No groan, no little muttered protest escaped him; for throat and lips were powerless, and the body that they served stood far off from Nicholas Ratcliffe. "The night wears late, grandfather. Will you not come home to Wildwater?" said a low voice at his side. He did not hear till the words had been twice repeated; then, starting as if a rude hand had wakened him from sleep, he began to moisten dry lips with a tongue as dry. "Janet, what brings thee here?" he said hoarsely. "Care for you, sir. You have been out of health, and I feared to leave you so late on the moor lest sickness——" He laughed brokenly. "Sickness—ay. I have been—not well. ’Twas rightly spoken, girl." His mood changed presently. The nearness of this girl, who alone had touched his heart to deep and selfless love; the drear sympathy of the gloaming heath; the swift and over-powering need of fellowship; all made for the confession which he had kept close locked these many days.