I found my patient at High Lea in a very bad way. He was suffering from an attack of apoplexy, and though I used all my skill on his behalf he passed away towards midnight. His wife very kindly offered me a bed for the night, but as I had important matters to attend to early in the morning I declined the hospitality, though I was thankful for a glass or two of generous port wine and some sandwiches. It was half-past twelve when I left the house on my return journey. The incident by the haunted mill had been put out of my head by the case I had been called upon to attend, but as I mounted my mare the groom, who had brought her round from the stable, said, ‘It be a bad night, doctor, for riding; the kind o’ night when dead things come out o’ their graves.’ I laughed, and replied: ‘Tom, lad, I am surprised to hear you talk such rubbish. I thought you had more sense than that.’ ‘Well, I tell ’ee what, doctor; if I had to ride to Brinton to-night I’d go by the cliffs and chance being drowned, rather than pass yon old mill.’ These words for the moment unnerved me, and I honestly confess that I resolved to go by the cliffs, dangerous as the road was in the dark. Nevertheless, I laughed at Tom’s fears, and ridiculed him, though when I left the squire’s grounds I turned the mare’s head towards the cliffs. In a few minutes I was ridiculing myself. ‘John Patmore Lindsay,’ I mentally exclaimed, ‘you are a fool. All your life you have been ridiculing stories of the supernatural, and now, at your time of life, are you going to allow yourself to be frightened by a bogey? Shame on you.’ I bucked up, grew bold, and thereupon altered my course, and got into the high-road again. There had been a slight improvement in the weather. It had ceased to rain, but the wind had settled down into a steady gale, and screeched and screamed over the moorland with a demoniacal fury. The darkness, however, was not so intense as it was, and a star here and there was visible through the torn clouds. But it was an eerie sort of night, and I was strangely impressed with a sense of my loneliness. It was absolutely unusual for me to feel like this, and I suggested to myself that my nerves were a little unstrung by overwork and the anxiety the squire’s illness had caused me. And so I rode on, bowing my head to the storm, while the mare stepped out well, and I anticipated that in little more than half an hour I should be snug in bed. As we got abreast of the haunted mill the mare once more gibbed, and all but threw me, and again I was struck in the face by the cold clammy _something_.