Tuke gave out a note of surprise. Far away, where Stockbridge townlet lay under the horizon hills, a broad blot of crimson was soaked into the sagging of the cloud-canopy above. This red stain palpitated like a very heart of fear, so that to gaze on it was to be insensibly influenced by a sympathetic emotion; and, in the beating of its pulse, rays and spars of shadows shot forth and were withdrawn and appeared again in other quarters, as if truly something were there struggling in its death throes. “Dennis--whereabouts is it?” “By the position, sir, well east of the village; about Mr. Pollack’s inn, I should reckon.” His master started violently. “Pollack’s inn?” he muttered, and cried, “Good God! it must be blazing to the roof!” A momentary amazed expression was on his face--something, some sense of omen or catastrophe, knocked at his heart;--then he addressed his man with immediate decisiveness. “Order my horse to be saddled, Dennis--quickly and silently. Say nothing of it to those within there; but, when I am gone, make Sir David my apologies and ask him, if he will, to await my return.” The servant responded and disappeared. For some minutes Tuke stood, his gaze concentrated on the wavering splotch of light, his brain banded, it seemed, with a filament of steel. If any figure was imaged tenderly and pitifully in his soul, it was not that that breathed close by him in the icy shadow of the roof, that watched his every look and motion like a dog. Indeed, so little was she that had brought him there in his mind, that when in another minute he turned to descend, he almost brushed her in his passage without being recalled thereby to thought of her presence. Going softly down, he found Dennis already mounted in the yard, with the bridle of his master’s horse held in his hand. “Whimple!” he exclaimed. “I go with you, sir,” said the man boldly. “Who knows what you may be riding to?” “But, my good fellow--Sir David and the captain?” “Sir, you come first. I have passed on your message.” How could he gainsay him? It gave him a thrill of exquisite pleasure thus to experience a devotion that could so over-crow a constitutional timidity. Silently together they padded it down the snowy drive, and in another minute were galloping along the road to Stockbridge. High on the roof a figure watched their departure. The girl had scarcely moved since her master left her alone. But now her slender feet went crisp on the frost as she paced to and fro in the angle of the gables. Once, suddenly, she paused at the limit of her path where the gutter-ledge, knee-high, formed the topmost courses of the house-front. And here she leapt upon the parapet, and stretched out her arms in a perilous manner into the dizzy whiteness of space. “I know,” she said, nodding downwards fantastically. “But would you catch me if I jumped? It would hurt him to the heart to find me, when he comes back, lying there all crushed and broken.”