Was there, then, something still left in life that a poor outcast like this should cling to it?

“I’ll go back with you,” he said more calmly.  They turned, and with Sim between them Ralph and Rotha began to retrace their steps.  They had not far to go, when Sim reeled like a drunken man, and when they were within a few paces he stopped.

“No,” he said, “I can’t.”  His breath was coming quick and fast.

“Come, man, they shall give you the ingle bench; I’ll see to that.  Come now,” said Ralph soothingly.

“I’ve walked in front of this house for an hour to-night, I have,” said Sim, “to and fro, to and fro, waiting for you; waiting, waiting; starting at my own shadow cast from the dim lowe of the windows, and then flying to hide when the door did at last—­at long last—­open or shut.”

Ralph shuddered.  It had been as he thought.  Then he said,—­

“Yes, yes; but you’ll come now, like a brave fellow—­’a braw chiel,’ you know.”

Sim started at the pleasantry with which Ralph had tried to soothe his spirits.  It struck a painful memory.  Ralph felt it too.

“Come,” he said, in an altered tone.

“No,” cried Sim, clasping his hands over his head.  “They’re worse than wild beasts, they are.  To-night I went up to the cave as usual.  The wind was blowing strong and keen in the valley; it had risen to a tempest on the screes.  I went in and turned up the bracken for my bed.  Then the rain began to fall; and the rain became hail, and the hail became sleet, and pelted in upon me, it did.  The wind soughed about my lone home—­my home!”

Again Sim reeled in the agony of his soul.

“This is peace to that wind,” he continued; “yes, peace.  Then the stones began to rumble down the rocks, and the rain to pour in through the great chinks in the roof of the cave.  Yet I stayed there—­I stayed.  Well, the ghyll roared louder and louder.  It seemed to overflow the gullock, it did.  I heard the big bowders shifted from their beds by the tumbling waters.  They rolled with heavy thuds down the brant sides of the fell—­down, down, down.  But I kept closer, closer.  Presently I heard the howl of the wolves—­”

“No, Sim; not that, old friend.”  “Yes, the pack from Lauvellen.  They’d been driven out of their caves—­not even they could live in their caves tonight.”  The delirium of Sim’s spirit seemed to overcome him.

“No more now, man,” said Ralph, putting his arm about him.  “You’re safe, at least, and all will be well with you.”

“Wait.  Nearer and nearer they came, nearer and nearer, till I knew they were above me, around me.  Yet I kept close, I did, I almost felt their breath.  Well, well, at last I saw two red eyes gleaming at me through the darkness—­”

“You’re feverish to-night, Sim,” interrupted Ralph.

“Then a great flash of lightning came.  It licked the ground afore me—­ay, licked.  Then a burst of thunder—­it must have been a thunderbolt—­I couldn’t hear the wind and sleet and water.  I fainted, that must have been it.  When I came round I groped about me where I lay—­”