"Get along with you," answered Humphrey. "You--of all men! I could never have believed this--never. And all for thirty-five pounds, fifteen and sevenpence! So much for your wisdom and reason. Be off and get down on your knees, if they'll bend, and ask God to forgive you." Head snorted and swore. Then he picked up his hat and departed in a towering rage. Mr. Baskerville's anger lasted a shorter time. He walked to the window, threw it open, listened to Head's explosive departure and then, when silence was restored, Humphrey himself went to his doorstep and looked out upon the fair June night. Mars and a moon nearly full sailed south together through unclouded skies, and beneath them lay, first, a low horizon, whose contour, smoothed by night's hand into dim darkness, showed neither point nor peak under the stars. Beneath all, valley-born, there shone silver radiance of mist--dense and luminous in the moonlight. Apparently quiescent, this vapour in truth drifted with ghostly proper motion before the night wind, and stole from the water-meadows upward toward the high places of the Moor. Against these shifting passages of fog, laid along the skirts of forest and above the murmuring ways of a hidden river, ascended silhouettes of trees, all black and still against the pearly light behind them. The vapour spread in wreaths and filaments of moisture intermingled. Seen afar it was still as standing water; but to one moving beside it, the mist appeared as on a trembling loom where moonlight wove in ebony and silver. The fabric broke, ravelled, fell asunder, and then built itself up once more. Again it dislimned and shivered into separate shades that seemed to live. From staple of streams, from the cold heart of a nightly river were the shadows born; and they writhed and worshipped--poor, heart-stricken spirits of the dew--love-mad for Selene on high. Only when red Mars descended and the moon went down, did these forlorn phantoms of vapour shrink and shudder and lie closer, for comfort, to the water mother that bore them. Hither, nigh midnight, in a frame of mind much out of tune with the nocturnal peace, passed Jack Head upon his homeward way. His loss had now become a sort of mental obsession, and he found it daily wax into a mightier outrage on humanity. He would have suffered in silence, but for the aggravation of these events whereby, from time to time, one or another of the wounded found his ill fortune healed. Examination might have showed an impartial mind that much method distinguished the process of this alleviation. Those responsible for it clearly possessed close knowledge of the circumstances; and they used it to minister in turn to the chief sufferers. The widows and fatherless were first indemnified; then others who least could sustain their losses.