With his hand at the bit he urged the horse on, and strode forward, looking down at the turf, without speaking. The sudden drunkenness of brain that had come over him left its vapours that were not withdrawn wholly and at once. But Anthony was not a man to brood over any sensation or experience, and when Urith asked, "Did you find your father's colts?" he recovered his good humour and gaiety, and answered in his wonted tone, "No, the fire must have driven them further north, maybe they are lost in Cranmeer." Then, with a laugh, he added, "I have been like Saul seeking my father's beasts, and like Saul, have found something better." He looked up at her with a flashing eye. She turned her head away. "You came to the moors alone?" she asked. He did not reply, but pointed to the west. "The wind is shifting, I hold. The direction of the smoke and flames is changed." She did not observe that he evaded giving her a reply to her question. The way now dipped into a broad valley, where the fire had already burnt, and had exhausted itself. It lay before them a dark trough, and yet scintillating in points where ashes glowed after the flames had exhausted themselves. An auroral light pervaded the sky overhead, especially bright above the hills to the east, and against it the granite piles of rock on the mountain tops, stood forth as ruined castles crumbling away in the conflagration, and above one huge block, like an altar, smoke rose in columns intermingled with flame, as though on it a gigantic sacrificial oblation were being made. "I suppose you were angry with me when I snatched you off Devil Tor, and you strove to free yourself?" said Anthony. "Not angry, but reluctant," she replied; "for I knew that you wished me well, and that your violence was kindly meant." He drew the reins sharply and arrested the horse, then turned, put his arm over the neck, and looked up at Urith. "Verily," said he, "I have the fancy that I should like to put you into one of your fits--as you term them." "Indeed," she answered; "it is a cruel fancy, for my fits end in some hurt. When the devil entered into the child it cast him into the fire or into the water, and tore him before it came out. You see what one fit has cost me"--she extended her bandaged hands. "But you do not feel how they sting and burn. It may have been rare sport for such as looked on to see this child half scorched by the fire, half smothered by the water, and prostrate, mangled by the devil--but I question if any one would have had the heart to invoke the devil to possess the child; yet that is what you would do." "Nay," said Anthony, a little confounded by her vehemence and the charge against him; "nay, I would not have you again hurt." "Then would you stand to be torn yourself?" "What--would you tear and bite me?" "I cannot say. When I have one of my fits on me I do not know what I am about." "Are you repentant for your action afterwards?"