“Very well,” I said; “but you must consider that revenge is nothing if it involves the avenger in the ruin of his victim. We have enough evidence and over to put the noose about this fellow’s neck; but the law doesn’t hang on moral testimony; and until we have the material, sifted and compact, it behoves us to move with caution. He isn’t one, I gather, to overlook a false step made by an enemy. And there’s to be no knifing, mind.” He assured me earnestly that he would be secret, circumspect, always entirely at my disposal and commands. And with that I had to rest content. After lunch on that second day, restless beyond endurance, I left him to an hour’s siesta while I went for a walk in the bitter weather. I wanted to think my thoughts alone, to decide upon a plan of campaign, to clear my mind for battle. It was snowing again, and the wind was wilder than ever--a furious stimulant to action. I went down first of all into the road, and saw it swept as clean as a curling rink, though the drifts on the wood side were piled six feet deep against the bank. But, bethinking myself that Dalston, or even his uncanny lady, might chance to come that way, I altered my mind, and, turning again into the Caddle, went off northward towards Hags Lane. It was stiff enough work while the trees protected me; but once out in the open, lungs, muscle, and resolution had to make a common cause of it. There was no thinking of anything here but just how to set one foot before the other and hold on. The wind was like a chaff cutter, whirling off ends of snow that stung one’s skin like straw points; the fields went up and down in tossed billows of white, with the ground frozen deep green in the troughs of them; leaden sky and spinning flakes and the dim tracery of trees were all wrought together in one’s view, as if life had got into that inextricable tangle which must mean the end of things. A wild enough day for a constitutional, one might have thought; and yet, it seemed, I was not the only, nor the weakest vessel, which had been driven to venture abroad in it. For, beating at length into the comparative harbourage of Hags Lane, I saw, come there before me in pursuit of shelter, the figure of a solitary young lady. She stood under a white-streaked hawthorn which, protruding from the bank, afforded her a certain cover. In her hand was a broken umbrella, which dangled like a shot rook with its pinions flopping. Her face looked very white and her eyes preternaturally large. I went up to her. “Miss Christmas,” I said, “are you out of your senses?” I could have thought that some soft sound, even like a suppressed sob, came from her lips. If I was not mistaken, she hastened to convince me at least that the fact of my arrival had nothing to do with it. Her answer was as cold as the falling snow. “I don’t think so. I am quite capable of taking care of myself, thank you.” “You are not, if you can venture out alone on such a day as this. I must take you home at once.”