This consciousness of something ridiculous in the whole business reassured him, however; and better feelings rose as he went on with a half-pleased, half-excited, exhilaration and curiosity. The night was fine, warm, and genial, but dark; a few stars shone large and lambent in the veiled sky, but there was as yet no moon, so that all the light there was was concentrated above in the sky, and the landscape underneath was wrapped in darkness, a soft, cool, incense-breathing obscurity--for night is as full of odours as the morning. It is full of sounds too, all the more mysterious for having no kind of connection with the visible; and no country is so full of sounds as the North country, where the road will now thread the edge of a dark, unseen, heathery, thymy moor, and now cross, at a hundred links and folds, the course of some invisible stream, or some dozens of little runlets tinkling on their way to a bigger home of waters. Now dark hedgerows would close in the path; now it would open up and widen into that world of space, the odorous, dewy moorland; now lead by the little street, the bridge, the straggling outskirts of a village. Generally all was quiet in the hamlets, the houses closed, the inhabitants in bed, but sometimes there would be a sudden gleam of lightness into the night, a dazzle from an open door or unshuttered window. The first of these rural places was Stanton, the village close to the great House, where Geoff unconsciously stole closer into the shadow, afraid to be seen. Here it was the smithy that was still open, a dazzling centre of light in the gloom. The smith came forward to his door as they passed, roused by the steady tread of their footsteps, and looked curiously out upon them, his figure relieved against the red background of light. “What, Dick! is’t you, lad?” he said, peering out. “Got off again? that’s right, that’s right; and who’s that along with you this fine night?” Bampfylde did not stop to reply, to Geoff’s great relief. He went on with long swinging steps, taking no notice. “If anybody asks you, say you don’t know,” he said as he went on, throwing back a sort of challenge into the gloom. He did not talk to his companion. Sometimes he whistled low, but as clearly as a bird, imitating indeed the notes of the birds, the mournful cry of the lapwing, the grating call of the corn-crake; sometimes he would sing to himself low crooning songs. In this way they made rapid progress to the foot of the hills.