The words died on his tongue. He had reached the stile, and saw standing on the further side of it, on the high ground which the darkness had not reached--with the last of the western light upon his face--Quentin Lowe. For a moment both men stared at each other, then Lowe moved away. Len stood stock still, a queer grimace on his features. "Were you calling me, sir?" A voice behind him made him start. The postman had come out of the darkness and stood at his elbow. "I thought I heard you shout 'Winkworth' when I was far up the hill. Anything you want, Mus' Furlonger?" "Yes--yes--would you take this telegram to Dormans, and see it sent off? Here's a bob...." His voice sounded vague, somehow, as if it were a mechanical process unconnected with his real self. He stood watching the old postman as he climbed the stile and took the turning for Dormans, where the track divided. A minute later a figure became silhouetted against the sky on his right; the path to Cowden and the valley farms dipped abruptly a few yards beyond the stile, then climbed to the high grounds near Goatsluck Wood. Quentin Lowe was clearly visible as he hurried away towards Kent--almost as if he feared pursuit. Leonard stared after him, his eyes bright with hate and fever. A kind of delirium was in his brain as he watched that thick-set, slouching figure, caricatured into a dwarf by his fury and the cheverel light. Then suddenly he bounded forward. He forgot all about the illness that was creeping over him, and Janey alone in the dark house. Or rather, he told himself that he would be up with Quentin in a minute, and would have settled him in a couple more. He would drag him back to Sparrow Hall by the scruff of the neck, and Janey, poor, outraged Janey, should be his judge, and taste triumph even in her despair. He climbed the stile and ran up the path, plunging recklessly through the tall, ghostly buttercups, glowing faintly in the twilight. He had soon lost the path, a mere borstall, and was trampling the hay-grass, but he did not slack. Quentin had for the moment disappeared. The trees of Goatsluck Wood waved against the sky: Len was conscious of a kind of illusion as he approached them--it seemed as if they were very far away, then suddenly he found himself on the tangled rim of the wood, the boughs shuddering and rustling over him, as he groped his way into the darkness.