ense enough to darken his lantern, to reel out of the Haunted House
and fling himself on the drenched grass beside his shivering mare.
Presently his debauch turned into a heavy sleep, and the hours
passed. Suddenly he woke and sat up. He heard, quite distinctly, the
sharp click of a horse's hoof. It had rung through his drunken sleep
like a knell. He had dreamt he heard again the passing bell that had
tolled for Blaisette.

All at once the click passed into a smothered sound of pounding and
slushing. The horse had left the high road and must be on the
moorland!

Sobered, Le Mierre leapt to his feet, unloosened the mare and jumped
on her back. He turned her inland and urged her forward. But,
trembling in every limb, the mare refused to move. Nearer and nearer
came the pounding of the horse. It stopped. A lantern flashed out.
Le Mierre saw the figure of a well known exciseman riding a powerful
black horse. A voice cried above the howling of the wind.

"Give yourself up, and all will be well! I've looked for you far and
wide. At last I find you. Come, Le Mierre, don't be a fool about
this. It will only be a fine, and perhaps not even that, if you give
up the other chaps."

But the master of Orvilliere was not to be reasoned with. He was in
a towering rage. He wrenched the pistol from the saddle. He fired it
at the exciseman. It missed him. But he, too, lost his temper. In an
instant he was beside Le Mierre and had dragged the pistol away and
flung it against the house. Dominic, beside himself and unnerved
with the night's carouse, grappled with the exciseman and tried to
throttle him.

A terrible struggle. A wild pounding of hoofs. Cries and oaths. The
fall of the lantern. Gusts of rain, and wind that shrieked as if an
agony of warning. Then, the mare broke away at last, in a frenzy of
terror, and made straight for the edge of the cliffs behind the
Haunted House.

Not one word came from Dominic Le Mierre as the mare stumbled, fell,
and, with a horrible, almost human cry, rolled over and over down
the precipitous height.

The exciseman dismounted, groped for the lantern, lit it, and fought
his way half down the cliff, at the risk of his life, as the wind
had changed and was blowing out to sea. But there was not a sign of
the mare and her rider.

At the earliest streak of dawn, the two parishes were roused, and
long and careful search went on for days. But it was all in vain.
Somewhere, in the deep seas, perhaps,