After the warmth of my room, the air was refreshing, and as I walked on down the dark avenue towards the village, the silence was complete save for the cry of an owl and the distant barking of the hounds in the Earl's celebrated kennels situated about a mile away. Where the trees met overhead the darkness was intense, but so often did I return home after nightfall that I knew every inch of the way. Still pondering deeply upon my strange conversation with Lolita, I strode forward without any thought of time or place, and utterly oblivious to everything, until of a sudden I was aroused by hearing a woman's loud, piercing shriek. I halted on the instant and listened. I judged the sound to be about a hundred yards to the left, in the darkness. After a few seconds it was repeated. The cry was Lolita's! Of that I felt absolutely convinced. Without a moment's hesitation I rushed forward, but in the cavernous blackness could discern nothing. I halted and listened, but beyond the hooting of the owl could discern no sound of any movement among that treble row of giant beeches. At first I tried to convince myself that those cries of distress were merely heard in my imagination, yet they were, alas! too tangible and distinct. For a full quarter of an hour I lingered there, straining eyes and ears, but all in vain. Then, with a resolve to take the man Warr into my confidence and invoke his aid to make a search, I rushed forward to the village, awakened him, and we both returned with lanterns as quickly as we could, and began to make a methodical examination of the spot whence I had believed the sounds emanated. I learned from Warr one very curious fact, namely, that he had been unable to go up to the Hall to deliver the letter, and it was still in his possession. It therefore seemed as though Lolita had caught sight of the stranger's face as he peered forth from the tap-room window, and by that means knew of his unwelcome return. For an hour we searched diligently both within the avenue and outside it, until of a sudden a cry from Warr caused my heart to leap. "Good Heavens! Mr Woodhouse!" he gasped, bending to a clump of long grass in a deep hollow behind the huge gnarled trunk of one of the great oaks. "Come and look here!" I dashed forward to the spot over which he held his hurricane lantern, saw what he had discovered, and stood appalled, dumbfounded, absolutely rooted to the spot. The sight presented there rendered the mystery of that evening even more bewildering and inscrutable. CHAPTER FOUR. WHEREIN A STRANGE STORY IS TOLD. For the moment we were both too aghast to speak. The clump of rank high grass in the hollow had been beaten down, and in the centre, revealed by the uncertain light of our lanterns, lay a young man, whose white face and wide-open, sightless eyes told us both the terrible truth. He had been murdered!