summit of the ridge when the rain
again increased its volume, and, looking about for temporary shelter, he
ascended a steep path which penetrated dense hazel bushes in the lower
part of its course. Further up it emerged upon a ledge immediately over
the turnpike-road, and sheltered by an overhanging face of rubble rock,
with bushes above. For a reason of his own he made this spot his refuge
from the storm, and turning his face to the left, conned the landscape
as a book.

He was overlooking the valley containing Elfride's residence.

From this point of observation the prospect exhibited the peculiarity
of being either brilliant foreground or the subdued tone of distance, a
sudden dip in the surface of the country lowering out of sight all the
intermediate prospect. In apparent contact with the trees and bushes
growing close beside him appeared the distant tract, terminated suddenly
by the brink of the series of cliffs which culminated in the tall giant
without a name--small and unimportant as here beheld. A leaf on a bough
at Stephen's elbow blotted out a whole hill in the contrasting district
far away; a green bunch of nuts covered a complete upland there, and the
great cliff itself was outvied by a pigmy crag in the bank hard by him.
Stephen had looked upon these things hundreds of times before to-day,
but he had never viewed them with such tenderness as now.

Stepping forward in this direction yet a little further, he could see
the tower of West Endelstow Church, beneath which he was to meet his
Elfride that night. And at the same time he noticed, coming over the
hill from the cliffs, a white speck in motion. It seemed first to be a
sea-gull flying low, but ultimately proved to be a human figure, running
with great rapidity. The form flitted on, heedless of the rain which
had caused Stephen's halt in this place, dropped down the heathery hill,
entered the vale, and was out of sight.

Whilst he meditated upon the meaning of this phenomenon, he was
surprised to see swim into his ken from the same point of departure
another moving speck, as different from the first as well could be,
insomuch that it was perceptible only by its blackness. Slowly and
regularly it took the same course, and there was not much doubt that
this was the form of a man. He, too, gradually descended from the upper
levels, and was lost in the valley below.

The rain had by this time again abated, and Stephen returned to the
road. Looking ahead