“Jogging along in the air will do me good--thanks all the same! I _am_ tired--you’re right, there--but I’m as strong as an ox and can stand anything. I don’t usually behave like this, even after a rent-audit! I’m dreadfully sorry if I upset you. I expect the glare of the lights hypnotised me on top of the landlord’s punch! You won’t trust yourself to me again, if I’m going to see visions in your company.” She gave him her hand a second time through the window, and he looked down at it in his own. “It _is_ like Hamer’s!” he said curiously, marking the resemblance in miniature, small, but square and strong. She withdrew it with a shade of embarrassment. “Yes, I know, but what made you think of it, now? I’m proud of it--dear old Dad! You’ll start at once, won’t you?--and do keep your wits about you on that lonely road!” At the top of the hill he pulled up for a last look down into the little blaze of life below him, throwing its brilliance over the pile of the church and the looming canopies of the trees. The lights still circled madly, the music still crashed, but they had no power over him, now. What was it that had used them to the forcing of that terrible moment? Vague words of Brack’s about clairvoyance drifted back into his mind. He had laughed with Bluecaster over a mental picture of Brack evoking spirits. Was he responsible for that tortured nightmare? Perhaps he had really been trying to tell him something; or was it just hypnotic reaction from that theory of his, obsessing him to madness? For himself, he could do nothing, now. Even if he had believed it, he could not doom the Lugg on the strength of a prophecy--after a rent-dinner, too! And he did not believe it. His faith stayed where it was. He quickened his horse along the silent highway, the healing of the night gathering him into quiet; and, as he rode, there went with him the pressure of the hand that was so like Hamer’s, cool and firm and blessedly kind. CHAPTER XV THE BEGINNING OF THE END It was a very dreamlike day on which Lup left Ninekyrkes, turning his back upon the marsh and all that had filled his life hitherto. He made no round of good-byes, no flurry of preparation, but when the time came, he went, just as he would go at the end of his day on a further journey yet. He would “bide still and die light,” as taught the unhurrying philosophy of Wiggie’s song.