After a time I climbed cautiously down from my coign of vantage, and making my way between loose stones and tangled shrubbery, I passed the black wheel and arrived at length beneath the shadow of the great oak. And here, for the first time, I began to feel very weary, with a weariness as much of the mind as of the body. In fact, what with my adventure with Peter, my long walk, and the excitement produced by old Jack Poyntz's strange yarn, I had been through a good deal for an invalid, and had earned the right to a little rest. Looking about me for a seat, my eye fell upon a small mound which lay between me and the base of the oak, with a bit of gray stone jutting out from one end of it. It might once have been a bench; at all events it would serve my turn, so I threw myself down at full length and pillowed my head and shoulders against it. As I lay, my face was turned towards the open end of the gorge, and away from the house and mill-wheel. These, however, dwelt in my memory; and on closing my eyes, I found that the scene of the ruin stood distinctly before my mental sight, more weird than the reality, because the phantom sunshine appeared pallid and ineffective. The sound of a breeze stirring amid the thick leaves over my head mingled with the gurgle of the stream, until it seemed as if some voice were speaking in a low minor key--a tone without passion and without hope. As I listened, and fancifully attempted to fashion words and sentences out of the inarticulate murmur, that odd sensation of not being alone (which had all along been hovering about me) suddenly intensified itself to the pitch of conviction. Sitting up with something of a start, I glanced nervously towards the mill, and at once had the pleasure of seeing my conviction justified. The figure of a man was actually standing on the opposite side of the stream, one hand resting upon the wheel, while he fixed upon me the gaze of a pair of black eyes. He had probably been there from the first, or if not precisely there, then in the near vicinity; there were hiding-places enough amongst the ruins. Nevertheless I felt an unreasonable anger against him. He had come upon me unawares; and a surprise, if it be not agreeable, is apt to be very much the reverse.