Griff, during the next few months, was greatly exercised in mind touching his friend the preacher. Gabriel Hirst's moods were swinging to wider extremes nowadays; the constant sight of Greta kept the inner fires going, and whether they flamed or smouldered was a question largely of the way she treated him. Not altogether, though: there were times when he wrenched himself free of his fetters, and set his thoughts on the Word instead of on Greta, and made his congregations quake with his whirlwind eloquence. But he was what old Jose Binns termed "wobbly-like"; his temper was uncertain, his attitude towards his fellows harsh beyond all his old-time limits of justice. If for an hour or so he could persuade himself into the belief that Greta cared for him, then he spent the rest of the day in self-denunciation, because his heart was fixed on carnal welfare: if the girl ran across his path and chanced to mock him, as she frequently did, he forgot that she was not the highest goal man could have, and railed at the destiny which showed him a heaven with shut gates. On and off, he sickened with hate of Lomax, thinking him an unacknowledged rival; and after the stormy scenes, which generally followed hot-foot on the heels of such humours, came abasement of himself before Lomax—an abasement that hurt Griff far more than the passion which preceded it.

Gabriel Hirst suffered, during these months, as he had not known how to suffer before that meeting with Greta Rotherson on the sunny Sabbath morning. He grew more sensitive than ever to changes in the face of the moor and sky. When the day was bright and the wind blew soft, there seemed excuse for his gaining passion—even a hope sometimes; but when the storm-skies opened, and the wind came ravening out of the north, and the moor streams swelled themselves to rivers, Gabriel Hirst would awake to the sins of the world and his own wrongdoing—would hark back to his scanty fare, and his wrestlings with the Adversary. But the Adversary, with that practical, vivid imaginativeness of his, showed nowadays in the guise of a woman.

Greta, for her part, was growing out of all patience with the preacher. He could not speak to her but the words tripped each other up as they came from his mouth; he was awkward with his hands and feet directly he found himself near her; he looked a hundred proposals out of his eyes, but never approached the utterance of one. She cared for him—if he would only let her—and she was angry with him, ashamed of, sorry for, him; so that amongst it all the girl, like Gabriel himself, was like to spoil her temper for good. What angered her most was that Gabriel was always like this in her company; she had seen him riding with Griff, and had noticed how manly, and neat, and broad-shouldered he looked. Why would he never come to her in decent clothes, or square his shoulders when he stood before her? And why, in the name of goodness, did she care how he came to her?

It was a matter of surprise to the villagers that their preacher should be so given to "fits and starts." One Sunday he would rain brimstone from the pulpit, while the next would find him tender almost to the verge of tears.

"Nay, nay, I doubt it's too mich for Gabriel; he should tak hisseln off ivery other week an' rest a bit," commented a member of his following.

"That's so, lad, that's so," assented Jose Binns; "he's nobbut poorly like, is th' pracher, or he'd niver gie us such pap sermons as that'n we hed yester morn. Oh, ay, he'd better tak a rest, an' that's plain to ony man 'at can see to th' end on his nose."

But Greta's comments on the preacher were of a different sort. "He's such a woman, father," she said to Miller Rotherson one day. It was her usual remark when Gabriel had particularly angered her.

"Don't be too sure, lass. I've no call to fight his battles, seeing how often he's bothered and bothered me about my soul—but this I'll say for Gabriel Hirst: he's no woman at the heart of him. Greta, I'd think shame if I was you to set so much store by the outside."

"I don't like an apple with an ugly rind, however good it be inside," said Greta, crossly.

"And there you make your mistake, as women-folk mostly do. Give me the ugliest-looking apple you can find, and I'll know it's worth eating."

"But Gabriel isn't ugly," flashed the girl, perversely.

The miller laid down his pipe, and looked quizzically at his daughter.

"Has he snared thy heart, lass, this preacher fellow?"

Greta tossed her head, got half-way through a denial, and ended with a storm of sobs.

"There, there, Greta, don't cry," murmured Miller Rotherson, as she came to his knee and buried her head out of sight. "Supposing he is too blind, this Gabriel Hirst, to know a good thing when he sees it—there are other men in the world."

She lifted up her head at that and pushed back the hair from her eyes.

"But not one that can come near him, father."

"Well, well; I never did understand the twists and the turns of you women, and I never shall, as I told your poor mother most every day of her life. He's such a woman, sings the lass one minute, and the next——"

"So he is," quoth Greta, and ran from the room to tidy herself.

And all this, as has been said, bothered Griff Lomax no little. He felt like a father to these two young people, and had set his heart on their making a match of it. He was in and out of the mill a good deal; old Rotherson took kindly to him, and Greta grew to regard him in the light of a hail-fellow-well-met sort of comrade, who showed no disposition to make love, and who was yet willing to serve as a friendly basis of jealousy when the occasion demanded it.

And all the while Griff never once guessed that he was himself walking—nay, running—into deep waters. The mother and he went very often across the three miles of moor that lay between Marshcotes and Peewit House. Almost as often Kate Strangeways walked to the Manor; sometimes she sat by the parlour fireside, with her hands in her lap, enjoying the sensation of being thoroughly idle; sometimes she played the model in the snug little studio upstairs, and watched Griff as he plied his brushes. True, he had asked permission simply to paint her portrait; but he wanted more than that—and, wanting it, contrived in his usual headstrong way to obtain it. There was no trace of self-deception in his enthusiasm for Kate's strong, lithe type of beauty. It was with an artist's zeal that he seized this and that new pose, or altered expression; and if he was gentler with her after the fatigue of posing, more solicitous that she should not tire herself unduly, than was altogether necessary—well, how could he help it, when he had, in very fact, been searching after this treasure-trove of his ever since he took to painting?

Mrs. Lomax buzzed in and out of the studio while they were at work, and was disposed to blame Griff for what she called his callousness in the matter of his model's welfare; at times she even went so far as to be indignant that the boy could be so blinded by his art as to lose sight of the good red gold that lay beneath the surface of Kate's quiet manners. But she never stopped to picture what must happen should Griff once dig down to the gold and set his heart on wealth that belonged to his neighbour.

Only Roddick guessed which way the wind was blowing, and he kept his opinions to himself. Griff would ride over to Wynyates two or three times a week, and he rarely left without a word or two about the woman who lived across the moor.

"Across the moor she lives, do you say?" Roddick had asked, with a start, the first time Griff had mentioned her.

"Yes; what of that? You look as if there were some one hereabouts in whom you are interested. Is that the reason——"

"Pish, romantic boy! I'm interested in grouse, trout, and rabbits; don't saddle me with your women." But he recurred to the topic for all that, as Griff was mounting Lassie at the gate. "Does she live on the Marshcotes moor?" he asked suddenly.

"No, the Cranshaw side," said Lomax, with deliberate intent to take Roddick unawares.

"By God!" muttered Roddick, under his breath.

Griff saw the contraction of his brows and laughed.

"So that is the trend of your secret, is it? Put your mind at rest, old fellow; she lives on the Marshcotes moor right enough, and she is the wife of a master-quarryman."

"You're a fool," said Roddick, gruffly, and shut the door with a bang.—"Why the devil won't Lomax let my secret alone?" he muttered, stirring up the fire in his parlour. "Jove, though, I fancied for the moment that Frender's Folly was his destination; Janet might care for a man of Lomax's build—the Lord knows why she picked me out from the crowd—and that's just the rub of it all. Oh, my God, if only I were free!"

After that evening Roddick learnt a good deal about Kate Strangeways—or, at any rate, about Griff's conception of her. He was an astute man where other people's follies were concerned, and he could have told Lomax that the adventure was bound to end in one of two ways.

"He wouldn't believe me, so where is the use of telling him?" Roddick argued. "For a clever man, old Lomax is pretty blind—yes, a confounded ass whenever a woman is toward. This is biting deeper than he'll like, though, when he comes to open his eyes; it's not the trashy stuff he called love while the Ogilvie woman had him in tow. Well, I'll wait; there'll be a cheerful blow-up one of these days."

But neither Griff nor the old lady of the Manor thought of coming evil. They walked far and wide by day, and at night they chatted of old times, of new endeavours, by the parlour fire. The itch for work, too, was taking a surer hold of Griff, and he was well satisfied with the progress of his picture. Autumn had long ago failed to winter, and the moors were looking their best; the heather had lost its gaudy raiment of purple, and stretched away in patches of rusty brown, of sober red, that fitted better with its savage dignity. Overhead, on the fine days, were wonderful shifting tints of sapphire and clear-cut green, with sunsets that stretched, purple and crimson, along half the horizon edge; then, again, the wind would shift to rain, and the sullen banks of yellow would come crowding across the sky from over Ling Crag, and the tremor and stress of storm would sweep into the man's heart. And all the while the woman across the moor grew dearer to him; she was part and parcel of the heath he loved, the sunsets that fired him to endeavour, the wind that made him drunker than wine could ever do. If he failed to look at the situation squarely, it was because Kate was always there, to be seen whenever the wish moved him; had a rival stepped in, or had she left Marshcotes for a space, Griff would better have understood it all.

Kate Strangeways, too, began to find heart again, began to feel the old use of her limbs and the old relish for a gale; she wondered, now and then, what had wrought this change in her, but it was long ere she was brought to confess that she counted the days between visit and visit of a man who had troubled himself to bring fresh interest into her dull round of care. Her manner towards her husband changed; she found courage to fight him, and she conquered; she furbished up a little bedroom facing south, and maintained her rights of property therein, and did not stop to inquire what instinct prompted her to privacy.

As for Joe, he got drunk oftener nowadays; his will held altogether too much parley with the shadowy places, and, as a consequence, he blustered more and was less capable than ever of backing up his bluster. Just once he tried to trespass on Kate's private domain; it was a night of late November, and he had sat up chatting with Hannah, the maid-of-all-work, after his wife had gone to bed. Hannah was even a little sourer than her wont, and she gave Strangeways a lengthy account of young Lomax's comings and goings.

"I'd be shamed, if I war a man, to put up wi' my wife's hoity-toity ways, same as tha does," she snarled, with a freedom born of the sense that she was talking to one of her own class. "She mun sleep i' her own bedroom, mun she? Happen there's more i' that nor there seems, if tha'd getten a couple of een i' thy heÄd."

"What dost 'a meÄn? Come, out wi' it; I cannot abide thy ins an' thy outs, an' thy shammocky ways o' talk. There's no mouse-holes about me, an' I look to find other fowk talking fair an' square. What dost 'a meÄn, woman?"

"Nay, if tha cannot guess, it's noan for a honest woman to tell thee. Didn't I say 'at young Lummax comes an' goes for all th' world as if he war th' maister? If that isn't enow, I'd like to know what is?"

Joe brought the bowl of his pipe down hard on the grate and smashed it.

"She shall shift her quarters to-neet, or I'll shift mine," he muttered.

"Fine talking," sneered Hannah.

"Hod thy whisht, wench! I tell thee I'll teach the wife to come it ower me; ay, that I will," said Joe, doggedly. He kicked off his boots and went shambling up the stairs; tried the handle of Kate's door, and found it locked; swore at her and commanded her to open. She did open at last, and stood on the threshold. She had taken off the bodice of her dress, and her bust and beautiful bare arms showed faintly by light of the candle behind her. Joe, despite his sodden state, felt something of the old desire as his eyes took in the contour of her figure.

"What do you want?" she demanded.

"It's lonely wark, Kate, living wi' a wife that's no wife, an' I willun't stand it."

"When you had me, Joe," said she bitterly, "you were never so free with kindness. A woman gets tired of being kicked out of bed, and I'm not going to risk it again."

"When fowks is wed, they're wed. Me an' thee's teed fast as parson could tee us, an' I've a right to thee—ay, that I hev—a right o' law, an' a right o' parson."

A swift smile came to Kate's lips, as she straightened herself and sought his eye in the semi-darkness.

"Then, Joe Strangeways, you can go for the parson and bring him to help you; for you'll never touch me again, if I have to fight the lot of you."

"I'm a honest man," Joe declared, after a disconcerted pause.

"It's a queer country that would call you honest, Joe." The wife was feeling almost flippant for the moment, as the stronger sort of women do in moments of strain.

A long silence followed, broken only by the shuffling of Joe's feet, and the ticking of the clock in the kitchen down below, and the rattle of mice behind the wainscoting.

"I'm a honest man," reiterated Joe at last; "an' dang me if I'll see my wife go wrang wi' th' first fine gent what taks a fancy to her."

"Go wrong!" she cried, with a sudden blaze of fury. "You dare to come to me and——"

Joe felt vaguely that he was getting the advantage now that he had made her angry.

"Ay, go wrang; that's what it's leading to," he responded doggedly.

All the fight went out of Kate. He had brought home to her at last what she had hidden from herself all these months: she was face to face with the truth, and she saw in a flash the dreary stretch of years that spread before her—after she had proved true to her conscience—after she had said good-bye to Griff, and they had each gone their ways. Without a word she turned; before Joe had divined her purpose, she had locked the door in his face and left him on the cold landing to marvel at the queer ways of women. She threw herself on the bed and cried her heart out, while her husband growled his way to his own room. She wanted never, never to see Griff again.

But Griff himself chanced to ride over the very next morning, and he altered her outlook on things. The clear, friendly look in his eyes—the easy talk on this or that topic of interest which they shared in common—his kindly insistence that she was far from well, and that he meant to tell his mother when he got home how little care she took of herself—all helped her to view the last night's misery in a quieter light. With a quick feminine subterfuge she told herself that his regard for her did not go very deep; if her own went deeper, need she make herself foolish in his eyes by bidding him never come near her again?

After he had gone—with a faint wonder in his mind at her changed manner—Kate went over all that she had suffered at her husband's hands; and across her honesty of purpose struck a swift desire to take life while she had it and enjoy it to the full. She put the desire away from her; but it returned day by day, and she grew less eager to cast it out. Gradually she let the old life go its way; Griff came and went, and she was glad to see him; she would not look behind.

But Roddick, in amongst his own perplexities, found time now and then for a sardonic grin, and a wonder as to how soon the climax would be reached.

And the climax came sooner than he expected.