Now, one instantly healthy effect this awakening had on him was to send him abroad again hawking over the moors. Thither had she gone, and there, presumably, was to be sought. He had a confidence that somehow he would alight on her again, and without seeking, however cautiously, to identify and run her to earth. As to that he was jealous, too, of making his quest a public matter: it would dilute the heady romance of the situation, and deprive it of its most intimate charm. So he breathed no word of his secret to living soul, but carried it in his breast, like an anachronous electric torch, himself alone aware of the light which dwelt within him, awaiting on his touch either to flash into being or to vanish. He took to wandering far afield in these days, even affecting to himself a topical interest in his explorations, while his eyes were unceasingly alert for some sign or token of their real objective. But enough pride remained to him to make him feign a nonchalance he was remote from feeling. He returned to angling, as it were to give some colour to his persistent haunting of the moors, and, recalling Clerivault’s instructions, dabbed and dibbled assiduously in the becks and streams, but without much success. However, as it happened, this pretext did actually at last lead him to the attainment of the company he coveted. He had pushed, one glowing afternoon in May, to a point on the moor, where a couple of little sturdy brooks, running separately in their valleys, came together, like two romping dogs, and headed straight in one course for the Dart. South of him lay Holne Chase, where the rich City Knight dwelt--a beautiful domain contained within an arm of the river, here sunk in a rocky ravine whose heights were thick with foliage. Northward, rising above the heave and tumble of green, stood Buckland Tor, the beacon planted on its summit like a great red tulip waiting to flower; and at his feet bubbled the pretty rivulet, swirling and eddying, and in places returning upon itself to linger in still pools very inviting for a fisherman’s purpose.