d granite ribs. A duller,
wearier waste I have never seen; but its dullness was its very charm.

And yet the very first night which I spent at Gaster Fell there came a
strange incident to lead my thoughts back once more to the world which I
had left behind me.

It had been a sullen and sultry evening, with great livid cloud-banks
mustering in the west. As the night wore on, the air within my little
cabin became closer and more oppressive. A weight seemed to rest upon my
brow and my chest. From far away the low rumble of thunder came moaning
over the moor. Unable to sleep, I dressed, and standing at my cottage
door, looked on the black solitude which surrounded me.

Taking the narrow sheep path which ran by this stream, I strolled along
it for some hundred yards, and had turned to retrace my steps, when the
moon was finally buried beneath an ink-black cloud, and the darkness
deepened so suddenly that I could see neither the path at my feet, the
stream upon my right, nor the rocks upon my left. I was standing groping
about in the thick gloom, when there came a crash of thunder with a flash
of lightning which lighted up the whole vast fell, so that every bush and
rock stood out clear and hard in the vivid light. It was but for an
instant, and yet that momentary view struck a thrill of fear and
astonishment through me, for in my very path, not twenty yards before me,
there stood a woman, the livid light beating upon her face and showing up
every detail of her dress and features.

There was no mistaking those dark eyes, that tall, graceful figure. It
was she--Eva Cameron, the woman whom I thought I had for ever left. For
an instant I stood petrified, marvelling whether this could indeed be
she, or whether it was some figment conjured up by my excited brain. Then
I ran swiftly forward in the direction where I had seen her, calling
loudly upon her, but without reply. Again I called, and again no answer
came back, save the melancholy wail of the owl. A second flash
illuminated the landscape, and the moon burst out from behind its cloud.
But I could not, though I climbed upon a knoll which overlooked the whole
moor, see any sign of this strange midnight wanderer. For an hour or
more I traversed the fell, and at last found myself back at my little
cabin, still uncertain as to whether it had been a woman or a shadow upon
which I gazed.

III--OF THE GREY COTTAGE IN THE GLEN

It was either on the fourth or t