The wind was so bitter, the roads so glassy with peril and so scourged with swept drifts of snow, that when at last on the following morning the little party of three gentlemen, with Dennis for guide, assembled in the hall of “Delsrop” preparatory to issuing on their quest, it was resolved to make no attempt to cover any part of the distance on horseback, but to trust to their legs and their endurance for the entire course. What this was, each of the three had but an indefinite idea, for the servant showed a strange reluctance to discuss the subject, even with his master; and would only place their goal approximately at some seven or eight miles. Seeing the pain it gave him to be pressed for closer particulars, Tuke good-humouredly insisted that there should be no further flogging of their willing horse; and presently there was not a man of them all but was so engrossed in his own discomfort as to be oblivious of any consideration but that his numbed extremities called for. Blythewood, who had relieved his mind of responsibility by early dispatching his note to his sister, was then free to give the most of his concern to his little aching tipple-befumed top-knot; Tuke, whose soul was hot with vexing self-problems, worried to get this distracting and depressing business of the stone done with; Luvaine stalked a very nightmare embodiment of grievance. Altogether it was something a dismal party that followed in the wake of the dismal serving-man--its members mere moving pillars of duffel and muffler, hands in pockets, rigid as pantomime chimney-pots, with their heads bent to the blast like cowls. The wind was dreadful. It came screaming down the road like flights of arrows; it swept the long wastes as if the very scythe of Death were threshing there for some least little blade of life; it seemed of a sharpness to blaze the tree-trunks and cut the copses into shreds. Not a living thing but themselves appeared to be on foot or wing in all the dreary landscape. Only a grey sky frothed with snowflakes, and the inexorable endless downs received and encompassed them and wrought upon their souls with horror of the soulless. Early in the tramp Dennis had led from the Stockbridge highway eastwards over the slopes. “What!” whined Sir David. “You give it us full in the face, Mr. Whimple? We shall be torn like bunting.” “There is no other way, sir,” said the man. “Can’t we get between hedges, at least?” “No, sir. No road leads to where she inhabits.” Luvaine turned with a stare, and Blythewood shrugged his shoulders. “This is Captain Phipps and the North Pole,” he said. “I protest, Luvaine, ’twill be nothing to my mind to exchange your cursed stone for half-a-dozen of my toes.” The soldier, the wind whizzing in his set teeth, muttered a word or two about the selfishness of uninterested parties; and that at last started the little baronet laughing--the first note of gaiety the expedition had produced.