CHAPTER I Tallente found himself possessed of a haunting, almost a morbid feeling that a lifetime had passed since last his car had turned out of the station gates and he had seen the moorland unroll itself before his eyes.

There was a new pungency in the autumn air, an unaccustomed scantiness in the herbiage of the moor and the low hedges growing from the top of the stone walls.

The glory of the heather had passed, though here and there a clump of brilliant yellow gorse remained.

The telegraph posts, leaning away from the wind, seemed somehow scantier; the road stretched between them, lonely and desolate.

From a farmhouse in the bosom of the tree-hung hills lights were already twinkling, and when he reached the edge of the moor, and the sea spread itself out almost at his feet, the shapes of the passing steamers, with their long trail of smoke, were blurred and uncertain.