was held long before Christ died upon His cross. I have stood in the church at midnight, Mary, and listened to the silence; there is a murmur in the air and a whisper of unrest that is bred deep in the soil and has no knowledge of the church and Altarnun.'
His words found echo in her mind and carried her away, back to the dark passage at Jamaica Inn. She remembered how she had stood there with her uncle dead upon the ground, and there was a sense of horror and fear about the walls that was born of an old cause. His death was nothing, was only a repetition of what had been before, long ago in time, when the hill where Jamaica stood today was bare but for heather and stone. She remembered how she had shivered, as though touched by a cold, inhuman hand; and she shivered now, looking at Francis Davey with his white hair and eyes: eyes that had looked upon the past.
They came to the fringe of moor and the rough track leading to the ford, and then beyond this and across the stream to the great black heart of the moor, where there were no tracks and no paths, but only the coarse tufted grass and the dead heather. Ever and again the horses stumbled on, the stones, or sank in the soft ground bordering the marshes, but Francis Davey found his way like a hawk in the air, hovering an instant and brooding upon the grass beneath him, then swerving again and plunging to the hard ground.
The tors rose up around them and hid the world behind, and the two horses were lost between the tumbling hills. Side by side they picked their path through the dead bracken with short, uncanny stride.
Mary's hopes began to falter, and she looked over her shoulder at the black hills that dwarfed her. The miles stretched between her and Warleggan, and already North Hill belonged to another world. There was an old magic in these moors that made them inaccessible, spacing them to eternity. Francis Davey knew their secret and cut through the darkness like a blind man in his home.
'Where are we bound?' she said at length, and he turned to her, smiling beneath his shovel hat, and pointed to the north.
'The time will come when officers of the law will walk the coasts of Cornwall,' he said. 'I told you that on our last journey, when you rode with me from Launceston. But tonight and tomorrow we shall meet no such interference; only the gulls and the wild birds haunt the cliffs from Boscastle to Hartland. The Atlantic has been my friend before; savage perhaps and more ruthless than I intended, but my friend nevertheless. You have heard of ships, Mary Yellan, I believe, though of late you would not speak of them; and a ship it will be that shall carry us from Cornwall.'
'So we are to leave England, are we, Mr. Davey?'
'What else would you suggest? After today the vicar of Altarnun must cast himself adrift from Holy Church and become a fugitive again. You shall see Spain, Mary, and Africa, and learn something of the sun; you shall feel desert sand under your feet, if you will. I care little where we go; you shall make the choice. Why do you smile and shake your head?'
'I smile because everything you say is fantastic, Mr. Davey, and impossible. You know as well as I do that I shall run from you at the first chance, and at the first village perhaps. I came with you tonight because you would have killed me otherwise, but in daylight, within sight and sound of men and women, you will be as powerless as I am now.'
'As you will, Mary Yellan. I am prepared for the risk. You forget, in your happy confidence, that the north coast of Cornwall bears no relation to the south. You come from Helford, you told me, where the pleasant lanes wind by the side of the river, and where your villages touch one another string upon string, and there are cottages upon the road. This north coast is hardly so hospitable, as you will find. It is as lonely and untravelled as these moors themselves, and never a man's face shall you look upon but mine until we come to the haven that I have in mind.'
'Let me grant you that, then,' said Mary, with a bluster born of fear; 'let me grant even that the sea is reached, and we upon your waiting ship, with the coast behind us. Name any country as you please, Africa or Spain, and do you think that I should follow you there and not expose you, a murderer of men?'
'You will have forgotten it by then, Mary Yellan.'
'Forgotten that you killed my mother's sister?'
'Yes, and more besides. Forgotten the moors, and Jamaica Inn, and your own little blundering feet that stumbled across my path. Forgotten your tears on the highroad from Launceston, and the young man who caused them.'
'You are pleased to be personal, Mr. Davey.'
'I am pleased to have touched you on the raw. Oh, don't bite your lip and frown. I can guess your thoughts. I told you before, I have heard confessions in my day, and I know the dreams of women better than you do yourself. There I have the advantage of the landlord's brother.'
He smiled again, the thin line breaking in his face, and she turned away so that she could not see the eyes that degraded her.
They rode on in silence, and after a while it seemed to Mary that the darkness of the night became intensified and the air closer, nor could she see the hills around her as she had before. The horses picked their way delicately, and now and again stopped in their tracks and snorted, as though in fear, uncertain of their steps. The ground was soggy now and treacherous, and, though Mary could no longer see the land on either side, she knew by the feel of the soft, yielding grass that they were encompassed by marshes.
This accounted for the horses' fear, and she glanced at her companion to discover his mood. He leant forward in his saddle, straining his eyes to the darkness that every moment became thicker and harder to penetrate, and she saw by his tense profile and his thin mouth tight closed like a trap that he was concentrating every nerve upon their passage, fraught suddenly with a new danger. The nervousness of her horse communicated itself to the rider, and Mary thought of these same marshes as she had seen them in the broad light of day, the brown tufted grass swaying to the wind, and, beyond, the tall, thin reeds quivering and rustling at the merest breath, crowded together and moving as one force, while beneath them the black water waited in silence. She knew how the people of the moors themselves could go astray and falter in their step, so that he who walked with confidence one moment could stumble the next, and sink without warning. Francis Davey knew the moors, but even he was not infallible and might lose his way.
A brook burbled and made song; a brook could be heard running over stones for a mile or more; but the water of the marshes made no sound. The first slip could be the last. Her nerves were strung to expectation, and half-consciously she made preparations to fling herself from the saddle should her horse stagger suddenly and with a sickening plunge grope like a blind thing in the strangling weeds. She heard her companion swallow, and the little trick put an edge upon her fear. He peered to right and left, his hat in his hand to better his sight, and already the moisture glistened in his hair and clung to his garments. Mary watched the damp mist rise from the low ground. She smelt the sour and rotting tang of reeds. And then, in front of them, barring their further progress, rolled a great bank of fog out of the night, a white wall that stifled every scent and sound.
Francis Davey drew rein, and the two horses obeyed him instantly, trembling and snorting, the steam from their flanks merging with the mist.
They waited awhile, for a moorland fog can roll away as suddenly as it comes, but this time there was no thin clearing of the air and no dissolving threads. It hung about them like a spider's web.
Then Francis Davey turned to Mary; like a ghost he looked beside her, with the fog on his lashes and his hair, and his white mask face inscrutable as ever.
'The gods have gone against me after all,' he said. 'I know these fogs of old, and this one will not lift for several hours. To continue now amongst the marshes would be worse madness than to return. We must wait for the dawn.'
She said nothing, her first hopes returning to her again; but even as the thought came to her she remembered that fog baffled pursuit and was an enemy to the hunter as well as the hunted.
'Where are we?' she asked, and as she spoke he took her rein once more and urged the horses to the left, away from the low ground, until the yielding grass gave place to firmer heather and loose stones, while the white fog moved with them step by step.
'There will be rest for you after all, Mary Yellan,' he said, 'and a cave for your shelter and granite for your bed. Tomorrow may bring the world to you again, but tonight you shall sleep on Rough Tor.'
The horses bent to the strain, and they climbed slowly and ponderously out of the mist to the black hills beyond.
Later Mary sat shrouded in her cloak like a phantom figure, with her back against a hollow stone. Her knees
