At
the threshold she swayed for a moment in the power of the storm; then
she was sucked out like a dried leaf and was no more seen. Overhead,
all about the eaves of the house the great wind shrilled mockery and
despairing mirth. The fire leapt toward the middle of the room and
fell back so much white ash. Bessie Prawle plumped down to her knees,
huddled, and prayed.

Andrew King, coming back, found her there at it, alone. His eyes swept
the room. "Mabilla! Bessie Prawle, where is Mabilla?" The girl huddled
and prayed on. He took her by the shoulder and shook her to and fro.
"You foul wench, you piece, this is your doing." Bessie sobbed her
denials, but he would not hear her. Snatching up a staff, he turned,
threw her down in his fury. He left the house and followed the wind.

The wind caught him the moment he was outside, and swept him onward
whether he would or not. He ran down the bank of the beck which seemed
to be racing him for a prize, leaping and thundering level with its
banks; before he had time to wonder whether the bridge still stood he
was up with it, over it and on the edge of the brae. Up the moorland
road he went, carried rather than running, and where it loses itself
in the first enclosure, being hard up against the wall, over he
vaulted, across the field and over the further wall. Out then upon the
open fell, where the heather makes great cushions, and between all of
them are bogs or stones, he was swept by the wind. It shrieked about
him and carried him up and over as if he were a leaf of autumn. Beyond
that was dangerous ground, but there was no stopping; he was caught in
the flood of the gale. He knew very well, however, whither it was
carrying him: to Knapp, that place of dread, whither he was now sure
Mabilla had been carried, resumed by her own people. There was no
drawing back, there was no time for prayer. All he could do was to
keep his feet.

He was carried down the Dryhope fell, he said, into the next valley,
swept somehow over the roaring beck in the bottom, and up the rugged
side of Knapp, where the peat-hags are as high as rocks, and presently
knew without the help of his eyes that he was nearing the forest. He
heard the swishing of the trees, the cracking of the boughs, the sharp
crack and crash which told of some limb torn off and sent to ruin; and
he knew also by some hush not far off that the wind, great and furious
as it was, was to be quieted within that awful place. It was so. He