e got to drive five miles across Missel Moor before we
get to the Manor. You won't see much because it's a dark night, but
you can see something."

Mary asked no more questions but waited in the darkness of her corner,
keeping her eyes on the window. The carriage lamps cast rays of light
a little distance ahead of them and she caught glimpses of the things
they passed. After they had left the station they had driven through a
tiny village and she had seen whitewashed cottages and the lights of a
public house. Then they had passed a church and a vicarage and a
little shop-window or so in a cottage with toys and sweets and odd
things set our for sale. Then they were on the highroad and she saw
hedges and trees. After that there seemed nothing different for a long
time--or at least it seemed a long time to her.

At last the horses began to go more slowly, as if they were climbing
up-hill, and presently there seemed to be no more hedges and no more
trees. She could see nothing, in fact, but a dense darkness on either
side. She leaned forward and pressed her face against the window just
as the carriage gave a big jolt.

"Eh! We're on the moor now sure enough," said Mrs. Medlock.

The carriage lamps shed a yellow light on a rough-looking road which
seemed to be cut through bushes and low-growing things which ended in
the great expanse of dark apparently spread out before and around them.
A wind was rising and making a singular, wild, low, rushing sound.

"It's--it's not the sea, is it?" said Mary, looking round at her
companion.

"No, not it," answered Mrs. Medlock. "Nor it isn't fields nor
mountains, it's just miles and miles and miles of wild land that
nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on
but wild ponies and sheep."

"I feel as if it might be the sea, if there were water on it," said
Mary. "It sounds like the sea just now."

"That's the wind blowing through the bushes," Mrs. Medlock said. "It's
a wild, dreary enough place to my mind, though there's plenty that
likes it--particularly when the heather's in bloom."

On and on they drove through the darkness, and though the rain stopped,
the wind rushed by and whistled and made strange sounds. The road went
up and down, and several times the carriage passed over a little bridge
beneath which water rushed very fast with a great deal of noise. Mary
felt as if the drive would never come to an end and that the wide,
bleak mo