"If they should waken, they would never let me go," she murmured. "I must tread softly—very softly." "’Tis th’ death-tick, an’ there’ll be fight afore th’ new moon’s in her cradle," muttered the Sexton in his sleep. Mistress Wayne, startled by his voice, ran fast across the floor, and lifted the latch, and went out into the gathering dawn. A moment only she halted in the lane, then turned to her right hand and went up toward the moor with hurried steps. She must reach Wildwater—and Wildwater, she knew lay somewhere up among the moors. Up and up she went, past naked pasture-land and lank, rough-furrowed fields. She passed a shepherd tending the ewes which had lambed in the inclement weather—one of the Marsh shepherds, who wondered sorely to see his late master’s wife come up the moors in such guise and at such an hour. "I want to get to Wildwater; some one is waiting for me there, and we have far to go, and I cannot find the way," she said, drawing near to the shepherd, yet keeping a watchful eye on him, and ready, like some wild thing of the moor, to take flight at the first hint of danger. The shepherd eyed her queerly. "Ye want Wildwater, Mistress? Well, ’tis a fairish step fro’ here to there—though yond bridle-track will land ye straight to th’ door-stun, if ye follow it far enough. Are ye forced to wend thither, if I mud axe a plain question?" "Oh, yes, I have a friend there who waits my coming. He’ll be angry if I fail him." "’Tis no good house to visit," said the shepherd, scratching his head in dire perplexity. "Have a thowt, Mistress, o’ them that live theer." "My lover dwells there. Is not that enough?" she answered gravely, and went her way. Up and up, till she gained the wildest of the moor, where eagles nested and the goshawk soared. Up and up, until she stood beside Wildwater Pool, and looked across its stagnant waters, and saw the long house of the Ratcliffes frown beetle-browed upon her from amid the waste of ling. And half she feared; and half she gladdened, thinking what welcome her lover held in store for her; but when she neared the gate and felt the swart defiance of the house, she halted. Between Ling Crag and Bouldsworth Hill it stood, this house of the Wildwater Ratcliffes. Above it were the wind-swept wastes of heath; below, the lean acres which bygone Ratcliffes had wrested from the clutches of the moor. Yet the dip of the hills sheltered it a little and the garden was trim-kept adding, if need were, the last touch of desolation to the homestead. A rambling house, shouldering roughly at the one end a group of laithes and mistals; above the narrow latticed windows the eaves hung sullenly, and the stone porch without the door offered at the best a cold welcome, and at the worst defiance. Over the porch was a motto, deep chiselled in the blackened stone.