John swore he should not have Tregors as well, not if he could stop it. How could he stop it? He puzzled his wits, but returned inevitably to the one answer he was trying to evade, “Marry within twelve months! Marry within twelve months!” His aunt had made a sure throw, he admitted with grim admiration, the cunning old devil! It was all very well saying “marry,” but who would marry a man that even the rough fisher girls avoided and children hid from? He would have no more force or subterfuge. If any woman consented to marry him it must be in full knowledge of what she was doing and of her own free will. There should be no repetition of that night seventeen years before. He shuddered. “No, by the Lord, no more of that; rather let Tregors go to Carveth.” In imagination he saw the Squire’s daughter as he was always seeing her in the dark nights when he was alone, stricken numb in his arms, glazed horror in her eyes—saw her running across the blind country, sobbing, panting, stumbling in furrows, torn by brambles, trying to get home, away from him—the Terror. He shut his eyes, as though to shut out the vision, and rode on past Germoe to Kenneggy Downs. The moon was flying through clouds like a circus girl through hoops, the road was swept by winged shadows. Puddles seemed to brim with milk at one moment, ink the next. At one moment the surrounding country was visible, a-gleam as with hoar frost, and then was blotted out in darkness; it was a night of complete and startling transformations. The shadow of a bare oak leapt upon them suddenly, flinging unsubstantial arms at man and horse as though to grasp them, a phantom octopus. Penhale’s mare shied, nearly unseating him. He came out of his somber thoughts, kicked spurs into her and drove her on at a smart trot. She swung forward, trembling and uneasy, nostrils swelling, ears twitching, as though she sensed uncanny presences abroad. They reached the high ground above Perranuthnoe, waste, gorse-covered downs. To the south the great indent of Mount’s Bay gloomed and glittered under cloud and moonshine; westward Paul Hill rose like a wall, a galaxy of ships’ riding lights pricking the shadow at its base. The track began to drop downhill, the moors gave over to fields with high banks. An old pack horse track, choked with undergrowth, broke into the road from the seaward side. The mare cocked her ears towards it, snorted and checked. Penhale laid into her with his whip. She bounded forward and shied again, but with such violence this time that John came out of the saddle altogether. He saw a shadow rush across the road, heard something thwack on the mare’s rump as she swerved from under him, and he fell, not on the road as he expected, but on top of a man, bearing him to the ground. As John fell he knew exactly what he had to deal with—highwaymen! The mare’s swerve had saved him a stunning blow on the head. He grappled with the assailant as they went down and they rolled over and over on