The war of the elements had begun in earnest.

Amid their increasing giant wrath, Helmsley stumbled almost unseeingly along,--keeping his head down and leaning more heavily than was his usual wont upon the stout ash stick which was part of the workman's outfit he had purchased for himself in Bristol, and which now served him as his best support.

In the gathering gloom, with his stooping thin figure, he looked more like a faded leaf fluttering in the gale than a man, and he was beginning now to realise with keen disappointment that his strength was not equal to the strain he had been putting upon it.

The weight of his seventy years was pressing him down,--and a sudden thrill of nervous terror ran through him lest his whim for wandering should cost him his life.
"And if I were to die of exhaustion out here on the hills, what would be said of me ?" he thought--"They would find my body--perhaps--after some days;--they would discover the money I carry in my vest lining, and a letter to Vesey which would declare my actual identity.

Then I should be called a fool or a madman--most probably the latter.