in the shadow of the passage and watched every movement of her stepfather in the kitchen below.  He had opened the old oak chest by the wall and was fumbling among its contents.  At last he found what he was looking for and drew it forth.  It was a long rope, and, with a shudder, Mary recognised the halter which had once been round her neck.  Her head swam as the thought came to her that Samuel Learoyd was going to sell her again, and groping her way back to her room she locked the door and threw herself on her bed.  Anxiously she listened for the farmer’s step on the staircase, but it did not come.  Instead, she heard him moving about in the kitchen, and then came the sound of the bolts being withdrawn from the front door.  A moment later his footsteps were heard on the gravel path.  Rousing herself with an effort, she once more unlocked the door and crept to the head of the stairs.  Come what may, she resolved to follow her stepfather and discover what were his plans.  She made her way down into the kitchen and, without striking a light, moved towards the front door.  It was ajar, and, opening it, she stared out into the starry night.  All was still, and no sound of Learoyd’s footsteps came to her from the farmyard.

Drawing her shawl tightly round her, she stepped out into the darkness.  Once she fancied that she heard the farmer muttering to himself in the croft below and the harrowing thought crossed her mind that this was all some cunning plan on his part to lure her out of the house and slip the halter round her neck under cover of night.  Her fears counselled her to return to the house and seek shelter from his mad frenzy behind lock and key, but the thought that Learoyd, if seized with a fit while exposed to the chill night air, would certainly meet his death overcame her fears and urged her on.

After more than two hours of fruitless search she returned to the farm, cherishing the hope that her stepfather might have returned too.  But the house was empty and the door still stood ajar.  Realising that further search in the darkness was unavailing, she waited for the dawn and determined that, as soon as the clock struck four, she would wake up the farm labourer at his cottage and get him to search the moors while she made her way down to Holmton to engage her husband and his son in the task of tracking the fugitive.  The dreary night passed at last, the larks burst into song above her head, and the cry of the curlew was heard on the moors.  She closed the farm door behind her, roused the hind, and then made her way as swiftly as possible to the town.  Here everybody was still asleep, and her footfalls waked echoes in the stone-paved streets.  Her nearest way to the weaver’s cottage lay through the market-place, and for a moment she hesitated whether she should pass that way or take the more circuitous route by the beck-side.  Realising that there was no time to lose, she summoned up all her courage, and, making her way past the church,