436
WYLDEB'S HAJVD.
but fatigue was imperious; and she sat down under the
grey stone which stood perpendicularly there, on what had
once been the step of a stile, leaning against the rude col-
umn behind her.
As she sat here she heard the clank of a step approach-
ing measuredly from the Brandon side. It was twelve
o'clock now; the chimes from the Gylingden church-tower
had proclaimed that in the distance some minutes before.
The honest Gylingden folk seldom heard the tower chimes
tell eleven, and gentle and simple had, of course, been
long in their beds.
The old woman had a secret hatred of this place, and
the unexpected sounds made her hold her breath. She
peeped round the stone, in whose shadow she was sitting.
The steps were not those of a man walking briskly with
a purpose; they were the desultory strides of a stroller
lounging out an hour's watch. The steps approached.
The figure was visible — that of a short broadish man,
with a mass of cloaks, rugs, and mufflers across his arm.
Carrying them with a sort of swagger, he came slowly
up to the part of the pathway opposite to the pillar,
where he dropped those draperies in a heap upon the grass;
and availing himself of the clear moon-light, he stopped
nearly confronting her.
It was the face of Mark Wylder — she knew it well —
but grown fat and broader, and there was — but this she
could not see distinctly — a purplish scar across his eye-
brow and cheek. She quivered with terror lest he should
have seen her, and might be meditating some mischef.
But she was seated close to the ground, several yards
away, and in the sharp shadow of the old block of stone.
He consulted his watch, and she sat fixed and powerless
as a portion of the block on which she leaned, staring up
at this, to her, terrific apparition. Mark Wylder's return
boded, she believed, something tremendous.