‘A child, am I, and drunk?’ muttered Feagus, irresolute whether to follow or turn back. ‘Well, I’m neither too young nor too drunk to guess what game you’re after, my fine gintleman. If I’m not before ye, ’tis you that will be blowing the gaff, and denouncing me, to save your own skin. So I won’t leave ye yet awhile, I’m thinking.’
He followed Conseltine at a short distance, grumbling and cursing at every footstep of the way. From time to time Conseltine glanced back to assure himself that he was following.
At last, soaked to the skin and splashed with mud, they came in view of Blake’s Hall. By this time the rain had almost ceased, but above the heights which rose seaward, beyond the flat valley in which the Hall lay, a great mass of vaporous cumuli, black and ominous, hung like a pall. Between this mass and the hill summits was a white space filled with smoke-like vapour, with gleams of shimmering silver. The silence had grown deeper, but when the slightest sound arose it travelled with startling distinctness for miles. Here and there, between the valley and the hills, were scattered cottages, bright patches of green pasture, and clumps of woodland. From these, at intervals, came the lowing of cattle, the crowing of a cock, the cry of a solitary human voice--each and all of which seemed to make the silence more intense.
Down to the cottage, or hall, went the two men, only to find that they had come upon a useless errand. The door stood open, but when they entered there was no sign of anybody within. Tired with his long walk, Feagus threw himself on a stool, and, lighting his pipe, began smoking furiously, while Conseltine, returning to the door, searched the prospect in vain for any trace of the man he sought.
A hundred yards from the threshold ran the river, a narrow and shallow stream in ordinary weather, but now broadened and deepened by the rain. It was boiling along at lightning speed, stained deep brown by the clay and peat of the moorlands whence it flowed. The stepping-stones at the ford, by which one gained the road to Castle Fitzpatrick, were covered, and to cross at all a man would have had to wade nearly waist-deep, at the risk of being carried away by the current.