They trudged off in the direction of Moor Farm; and, as it was beginning to get dusk, I soon lost sight of them.
Half an hour afterward I looked out again.
The wind had lulled with the sunset, but the mist was rising, and a heavy rain was beginning to fall.

Never did the lonely prospect of the moor look so dreary as it looked to my eyes that evening.

Never did I regret any slight thing more sincerely than I then regretted the leaving of Mr.Knifton's pocketbook in my charge.

I cannot say that I suffered under any actual alarm, for I felt next to certain that neither Shifty Dick nor Jerry had got a chance of setting eyes on so small a thing as the pocketbook while they were in the kitchen; but there was a kind of vague distrust troubling me--a suspicion of the night--a dislike of being left by myself, which I never remember having experienced before.
This feeling so increased after I had closed the door and gone back to the kitchen, that, when I heard the voices of the quarrymen as they passed our cottage on their way home to the village in the valley below Moor Farm, I stepped out into the passage with a momentary notion of telling them how I was situated, and asking them for advice and protection.
I had hardly formed this idea, however, before I dismissed it.

None of the quarrymen were intimate friends of mine.