By the time that Lassie had been put up in the stable, groomed, and fed, the snow had ceased, though the frost bit harder than ever. Griff fastened the stable-door, and moved irresolutely towards the house. Then he remembered what was inside, on the seat in the parlour where he had laid it. The bairn, indeed, was lying on a bed upstairs, washed and laid out by the women-folk; but to Griff's fancy it was still in the chair, and he shrank from the thought of entering.

Out there in the cold he stood and tried to feel, and wondered at the hideous blank that stretched on, on before him, characterless as the even plain of snow to north and south and east and west of this mid-moor house. He cried aloud in his desolation, and hard on the heels of the need to voice his trouble came the need for fellowship. He must have touch of human sympathy; that was the one thing needful, the one thing vital. Then, slowly, he began to think of the preacher, of Greta, of Leo Roddick. And Roddick seemed the strongest of them all, the fittest to give him help.

Yes; he would hurry across to Wynyates. Old Roddick was never the man to mind being knocked up in the middle of the night, if there were need for it. And God knew there was need for it now; he must save his reason, since all else had gone by the board.

The snow was crisping under the frost fingers, and the stars shone clear. He tried not to let the quick motion, the keen air, bring back his scattered impressions of all that had happened during the past few days. When a memory cut at his heart, he walked faster, thinking to drive it out; when the memory returned, he quickened to a run, as if to dodge it by flight. He reached Wynyates at last, and pounded at the door with his fists. From within sounded a low cry, in a woman's voice, and the patter of feet across the hall.

"Is that you, Leo?" said the voice. "Dear, I have waited so long for you."

The door was opened, and on the threshold stood Janet Laverack, never doubting but that it was Roddick who waited on the other side. She was dressed as she had been for dinner that night at the Folly; but she had taken off her sodden shoes and stockings, and her little white feet peeped out from a pair of Roddick's old slippers, absurdly too large for her. The bottom of her skirt, too, was grievously bedrabbled.

Griff stepped into the light.

"I am Roddick's friend," he said vaguely.

The girl looked and looked at him. He would have been an alarming object enough in broad daylight, and with help to be had for the asking; but to-night he showed ghastly, dishevelled as he was, his clothes steaming like a moor fog now that he had come into the warmth. Janet, however, knowing that she must face the danger by aid of her wits alone, neither screamed nor gave way.

"Who are you?" she asked in a low voice.

"Griff Lomax. I—I came to ask Roddick's help. Isn't he at home?"

A curious half-smile played about the girl's lips.

"I came to ask his help, too; so we are friends so far. I know you well by name. You have had trouble lately?"

Griff went light-headed for a moment. The oak panelling of the hall circled round him; he lifted his eyes to the girl's to steady himself.

"Trouble?" he repeated, with an empty laugh. "Oh, nothing to speak of—wife and child left me for good, that is all—died, you know——"

"Come and sit down here; you are not yourself," said the girl, peremptorily.

The last of her fear had vanished at sight of his helplessness, and she was feeling that same need for action which had weighed so heavily on Griff a while ago.

He dropped obediently into the armchair.

"When did you last have food?" went on Janet.

"I—I forget. Some time this morning, I believe—just before the child died."

She went off to the pantry without another word, and brought out cold beef and bread. A bottle of whisky was standing on the sideboard, and she poured him out a liberal allowance.

"Now, eat and drink. It was high time you sought some one who could look after you."

Griff shook his head.

"I can't," he muttered obstinately.

"You shall," she answered quietly, putting a plate on his knee, and the tumbler on the hob beside him.

Again he succumbed to the stronger will, and did as he was bid. His appetite grew with each mouthful, and he passed his plate for more when he had finished. And after that he mechanically pulled out his pipe, filled and lit it.

"There!" said Janet, approvingly. "Smoke away, and tell me all about it."

Griff almost smiled at her quaint, elderly air. It seemed very much like a dream, all this; and easily as in a dream he found himself telling Janet all that had happened. She was quiet for a little after he had finished; then—

"We were talking about you, Leo and I, not long ago. He told me of your wife's death, and I was, oh, so sorry for you, though I had never even seen you. Only, I can guess what the feeling must be. If Leo were to die, I think I should just stop living and have done with it." She was craftily drawing him away from his own trouble, and into hers. "You won't think it odd of me to be talking to you like this? Because, you see, Leo tells me you know all our story."

"How do you come to be here?" said Griff, abruptly.

"I couldn't bear it any longer, so I came; that's why. And Leo was—was a brute to me. That is why I hadn't the heart to be afraid of you when you came."

"A brute? How do you mean?"

"He talked of my sacrificing myself, and he lectured me, just as if I had been a silly school-girl, following the first romantic notion she had got into her head. If Leo could have killed my love, he would have done it long ago: he shocks and hurts me when he is angry. Poor old boy!" she broke off suddenly. "He is doing more for that—that woman, than I would ever do. And here am I blaming him for being a brute."

"Which woman?" asked Griff, who was still struggling with his faculties.

"The woman who calls herself his wife. The nurse sent across, soon after I came, to say that she was unmanageable, and Leo went with her. I expect him home every minute. I want him back, too, though I know he will be angrier than ever with me; he always is after these struggles. It costs him so much not to let her die at these times."

"Did Roddick allow you to stay here?"

This was another of Griff's childishly direct questions. He had got a little away from his own worries, and was growing responsive to the interest in his friend's situation. Somewhere, too deep down to be brought to the surface as yet, was a feeling that a certain plan, if he could once hit on it, would give all three of them relief.

"He had to. There could be no question of my returning across the moors, so he was going to sit up here all night, leaving his room to me. He had packed me off to bed a moment before the nurse came, but I listened at the head of the stairs and slipped down when he had gone, to see that everything was nice and warm for him on his return."

"Just as Kate used to do, just as Kate used to do for me," muttered Griff.

"But it will all have to be fought out again to-morrow," the girl went on. "And father will guess where I am and fetch me, when they find out in the morning that I have run away; and that will be the end of it, if Leo won't let me be strong, instead of just good in a worldly way."

She felt, somehow, that this shaggy, unkempt man was rather on the plane of the animals, to whom we talk freely of the things that lie nearest our hearts. She was already losing sight of the bitter personal grief that had brought him here.

Griff remembered that her father could never in this world come to fetch her; but that seemed a matter of lighter moment, and he waited to hear more from her. That fugitive idea was taking more definite shape in his brain.

"Do you think we ought to wait, year after year, till my hair is grey, and my face wrinkled, and I'm too unspeakably hideous to give him a moment's pleasure?" demanded the girl, after a reflective pause. She leaned forward eagerly for his answer.

"No, I don't," said Griff, with sudden energy. "Take your chance while you have it, and thank the Lord for every scrap of happiness you snatch out of the fire."

"Ah, I thought you would be on my side. Will you tell Leo that? Will you help me to show him that waiting is the only real sacrifice? It is only me he thinks of, you know, all through, and that makes it all the harder to bear when I know how blind he is to my needs."

That nascent idea leaped in Griff's brain.

"I can help you to more than that, if once I see my way clear," he said.

She looked doubtfully at him, fearing a return of his first distraught condition. But his mouth was firm, his eyes bright.

"I don't understand you," she murmured.

"I don't understand myself yet. Give me time.—There's Roddick. Shall I let him in?" he broke off, as a strong hand was laid on the outer door.

She flushed a little.

"No, I can't let you do that. It is my privilege."

Griff, sitting quietly by the fire, knew that she was lying in Roddick's arms out there, and for a moment he grudged them their partial happiness. Then he smiled gravely, and tried to understand how he might help these two. If only he could find a deed of real charity to do, he might yet win peace for himself.

In the midst of his pondering, Roddick stamped across the hall and into the parlour.

"So you're here," he began, with more than his usual gruffness. But he stopped at sight of his friend's face. "Old man, what has happened to you? You look like a corpse, and your clothes are dripping wet!"

"I came to talk things over with you, and found Miss Laverack here instead. She has done me a world of good," said Griff, simply.

"She ought never to have been out of bed at this time. Janet, off you go. Lomax and I will make an all-night sitting of it, and thrash our troubles out together."

She came and gave Griff her hand, smiling at him with royal friendliness.

"Good night," she whispered. "Try to make the best of it." Then, turning before she had got half across the room, "Leo, can't you give your friend a change? I ought to have thought of it sooner. He will catch his death of cold."

"I won't bother. I'm used to getting wet through."

"Yes, you will bother," put in Roddick. "Upstairs you come, and put dry things on at once. Janet, can you wait down here a little? We shan't be long."

When at last they were alone together, Roddick drew Griff on to talk of his troubles, and afterwards—just as Janet had done, but with less of self in his motive—he tried to beguile him with details of his own sufferings.

"This place goes by the name of Wynyates—'Gates of the Wind,' it means, they tell me; and, God, I can well believe it! They couldn't have hit on a better name. Half a mile north lives a woman I go out of my way to take care of, lest she should give me my liberty; five miles to the other side Janet lives. A cold blast and a warm wind screech and whimper, day and night, round Wynyates. They seem to blow clean through me, Lomax; but I daren't evade them. It gets on the nerves in time," he finished, tranquilly.

Griff sat up in his chair and glared across the hearth. "You're an immaculate fool, Roddick. Every time you save your wife, conscience or no conscience, you stab the woman you are in love with.—Was she bad to-night?"

"Worse than I've seen her yet. The poor devil of a nurse is half-killed with the work. She said I could leave her for the rest of the night; but I shouldn't have done if Janet had not been here. I expect to have the nurse on my hands next. Then there's Janet; how am I going to steer her through the pretty mess she has got herself into?"

Griff had got hold of the right end of his idea now. "Tell me more about your wife," he said eagerly. "Where does she live?"

"At a cottage called Bents Foot, half a mile further up the hill. You seem interested in the woman; are you thinking of dropping a piece of paste-board on her?" snapped Roddick, with bitter levity.

"You're sure you can't get a divorce?" went on Griff, with the same eager persistence.

"No, I tell you!"

The other gave vent to a sigh that was oddly suggestive of relief. "She can live any length of time, can't she?"

"Heaven only knows. Years ago she ought to have died; years ahead she may be living. And meanwhile my little darling is killing herself by inches."

Again that quick, sharp sigh from Griff.

"Killing herself by inches?" he repeated.

"Yes, damn you! why play the parrot to a beggarly statement of fact?"

Griff threw a couple of peats on a fire that needed no replenishing.

"Well," he said, settling back into his seat, "let us put away our worries, old man; we're getting morbid. Perhaps a talk about old times will do us good."

Roddick failed to notice a something that lay very near to the surface of the other's apparent carelessness; after chatting of this and that, he began to nod, then to doze; until finally he was sleeping as soundly as if there were no perplexities to be faced on the morrow.

But Griff had no inclination to sleep. He sat there, watching now the live peats, now his friend's face. As the dawn crept white over the white snow, he went quickly from the house towards a cottage called Bents Foot.