It was a heavy morning. The mists were gliding slowly up the mountains in grim, hooded shapes, their long white skirts sweeping the meadows as they passed. Overhead the sky was dim and empty. Underfoot the roads were wet and thick. But Dan felt nothing of this wintry gloom. It did not touch his emancipated spirit. His face seemed to open as he walked, and his very stature to increase. He reflected that the lumbering coach which carried the Deemster and his daughter and bastard son must now be far on its way through the ruts of this rough turnpike that lay between Michael and Ramsey. And he pushed on with new vigor. He passed few persons on the roads. The houses seemed to be deserted. Here or there a little brood of children played about a cottage door. He hailed them cheerily as he went by, and could not help observing that when the little ones recognized him they dropped their play and huddled together at the threshold like sheep affrighted. As he passed into Ballaugh under the foot of Glen Dhoo he came upon Corlett Ballafayle. The great man opened his eyes wide at sight of Dan and made no answer to his salutation; but when Dan had gone on some distance he turned, as if by a sudden impulse, and hailed him with scant ceremony. "Ay, why do you take that road?" Dan twisted his head, but he did not stop, and Corlett Ballafayle laughed in his throat at a second and more satisfying reflection, and then, without waiting for an answer to his question, he waved the back of one hand, and said, "All right. Follow on. It's nothing to me." Dan had seen the flicker of good-will, followed by the flame of uncharity, that flashed over the man's face, but he had no taste or time for parley. Pushing on past the muggy inn by the bridge, past the smithy that stood there and the brewery that stood opposite, he came into the village. There the women, standing at their doors, put their heads together, looked after him and whispered, and, like Corlett Ballafayle, forgot to answer his greeting. It was then that over his new-found elevation of soul Dan felt a creeping sense of shame. The horror and terror that had gone before had left no room for the lower emotion. Overwhelmed by a crushing idea of his guilt before God, he had not realized his position in the eyes of his fellow-men. But now he realized it, and knew that his crime was known. He saw himself as a hunted man, a homeless, friendless wanderer on the earth, a murderer from whom all must shrink. His head fell into his breast as he walked, his eyes dropped to the ground, he lifted his face no more to the faces of the people whom he passed, and gave none his salutation.