The Devil

It was the evening of another day; and Dale stood motionless in the ride, close to Kibworth Rocks.

The twilight was fading rapidly; clouds that had crept up from the east filled the sky, and presaged a dark and probably a stormy night. Every now and then a gust of angry wind shook the tops of the fir trees; then the air was still and heavy again, and then the wind came back a little fiercer than before. Dale felt sure that there would be rain presently, and he thought: "If his ghost is really lying in there, it'll get as wet as that first night when the showers washed away all the blood."

He stared and listened, but to-night he could not fancy that he heard the dead man calling to him. He could not invent any appropriate conversation. It seemed to him that the ugly phantom was refusing to talk, that it had become sulky, or that it was pretending not to be there at all in order to effect a most insidious purpose. Yes, that must be the explanation. It wanted to entice and lure him off the ride--to make him venture right in there among the rocks, so that he might be shown the thing that had haunted him in dreams.

"Very well," said Dale, "so be it. That's the idea. All right. I agree."

He did not, however, move for another minute or so. He was thinking hard, and listening eagerly. But he could hear no sound, could imagine no sound, other than that made by the wind.

Then he moved, and, examining the ground, made his way slowly from the ride to the rocks, thinking the while, "It's impossible to follow my exact footsteps, because things have changed--but this was about the line I took with him."

Forcing himself through a tangle of holly and hawthorn, he came out into the open space and his feet struck against stone. In front of him the rocks rose darkly against the waning light, and he began to clamber about among them, over smooth round surfaces, along narrow gullies, and by cruel jagged ridges, seeking to find the exact spot where he had left the dead body. "It was about here," he said, after a time. "It was close by here. Prob'bly down there, where the foxgloves and the blackberries have taken root. Anyhow, that's near enough. I've come as near as I can;" and he sat down upon the ledge just above this hollow, and looked about him, attentively, in all directions.

The wind had ceased to blow; not a leaf stirred; silence reigned over the strewn boulders. Downward, where the ground fell away to a deep chasm, everything was indistinct; to the west, beneath banked masses of cloud, the last glow of the sunset showed in blood-red bands, and on this side all the intervening trees were black as ink; all about him the shadows filled every hollow, and the rocks were like shoals or reefs above the surface of a stagnant sea.