ts head towards Wythburn, and rode down to the city by Harrop
Tarn.

At the first house--it was Luke Cockrigg's, and it stood on the bank
above the burn--he left the horse, and borrowed a lantern. The family
would have dissuaded him from an attempt to return to the fells, but
he was resolved. There was no reasoning against the resolution
pictured on his rigid and cadaverous countenance.

The drizzling rain still fell and the night had closed in when Ralph
set his face afresh towards the mountains.

And now the sickening horrors of sentiment overtook him, for now he
had time to reflect upon what had occurred. The figure of the
riderless horse flying with its dead burden before the wind had fixed
itself on his imagination; and while the darkness was concealing the
physical surroundings, it was revealing the phantasm in the glimmering
outlines of every rock and tree. Look where he would, peering long and
deep into the blackness of a night without moon or stars, without
cloud or sky, with only a blank density around and about, Ralph seemed
to see in fitful flashes that came and went--now on the right and now
on the left of him, now in front and now behind, now on the earth at
his feet and now in the dumb vapor floating above him--the spectre of
that riderless horse. Sometimes he would stop and listen, thinking he
heard a horse canter close past him; but no, it was the noise of a
hidden river as its waters leapt over the stones. Sometimes he thought
he heard the neigh of a horse in the distance; but no, it was only the
whinny of the wind. His dog had followed close behind him when he fled
from the pass, and it was still at his heels. Sometimes Laddie would
dart away and be lost for a few minutes in the darkness. Then the
dog's muffled bark would be heard, and Ralph's blood would seem to
stand still with a dread apprehension that dared not to take the name
of hope. No; it was only a sheep that had strayed from its fold, and
had taken shelter from wind and rain beneath a stone in a narrow
cleft, and was now sending up into the night the pitiful cry of a lost
and desolate creature.

No, no, no; nowhere would the hills give up the object of his search;
and Ralph walked on and on with a heart that sank and still sank.

He knew these trackless uplands as few knew them, and not even the
abstraction of mind that came with these solitary hours caused him an
uncertain step. On and on, through the long dark night, to the Stye
Hea