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The high road of Torteval was thronged with people who, for the most part, carried lanterns. He hurried past, not speaking to a soul. Presently he had reached his home, and, turning sharply round the corner of the little garden, he found himself in a lane which ended in a cart rut and brought him out to the moorland of Pleinmont and close to the Haunted House.

She wound in and out of low, prickly gorze bushes covering the moorland till she reached Pleinmont Point, then she ran down a gently sloping grass valley till she got to the sea. She had an appointment with Dominic at Pezerie, the bottom of the valley which skirted the rocky coast. It was blowing hard, and yet a dense mist hung over the sea.

It was her presence, he assured her, with a stare into her trusting eyes, that drew him to Colomberie Farm to-night, otherwise he would have been out fishing beyond Pleinmont Point. Dominic had chuckled to himself many times during the past months when he reviewed his position towards Ellenor.

Never once yet had the excisemen appeared within miles of the Haunted House. With a dark lantern swinging from the saddle bow, he rode out of the farmyard and cantered up the hill. Then, urging the white mare to her swiftest pace, he flew through steep lanes, past Torteval Church, and along the high road to Pleinmont. The rain poured in torrents. The wind roared and howled.

Corbet's gentle voice asked, in great curiosity, where Ellenor was going at this time of night. "To Les Brandons, on Pleinmont," said Jean bluntly. "We didn't like it. But as for me, I've not got the heart to refuse her nothing, since we nearly lost her with the small-pox poor child!" The women echoed his deep sigh: and Perrin said quickly, "Look here! I'm off to Les Brandons too!

Rising, she groped her way into the garden, and, without cloak or hat, she ran down the quiet lanes and along the high road to the moorland of Pleinmont, where her little home received her with its homely air of comfort. She crept up to her attic bedroom, and when her father and mother returned home, she would give no account of her sudden disappearance from the veille.

Over the hills, and once more across country, the howling wind made its way, past the old church of Saint Pierre du Bois, past the lanes to Torteval parish, and along the high road to Pleinmont, where it had full play over a wide moorland district, dotted with low masses of gorze and groups of boulders. Here, too, was just one little cottage to shake and grip and freeze with biting draughts.

Christmas Day, not in the least typical, dawned over the heights of Pleinmont in pale gold and soft grey; and the hours that followed were mild and cloudy as those of a day in Spring.

Their majesty! their locks stream, their swords are half drawn! they sheathe them, they lean forward, they extend their arms! they beckon! I come, I come!" She stretched out her arms with the old familiar gesture and sank back, having breathed her spirit to the tempest which she loved so well. They buried her on the cliffs of Pleinmont, where a cairn long marked her resting-place.

"We have three hours," said the maiden, "ere we leave our guest!" she looked archly at Jean as she thus described him "it should suffice!" They were now on the heights of Pleinmont; no one was moving, though voices of men and beasts could be plainly heard in the distance. "They feast to-night to the Gods," said Hilda; "we need fear only some belated laggard!"