Here and there little
grey-roofed, grey-walled cottages huddled into villages, but for many
miles at a time no house was visible nor any sign of life save the
scattered sheep which wandered over the mountain sides. It was a
depressing country, and my heart grew heavier and heavier as I neared my
journey’s end, until at last the train pulled up at the little village
of Stedding Bridge, where my uncle had told me to alight. A single
ramshackle trap, with a country lout to drive it, was waiting at the
station. “Is this Mr. Stephen Maple’s?” I asked. The fellow looked at me with eyes which were full of suspicion. “What is
your name?” he asked, speaking a dialect which I will not attempt to
reproduce. “John Maple.”

“Anything to prove it?”

I half raised my hand, for my temper is none of the best, and then I
reflected that the fellow was probably only carrying out the directions
of my uncle. For answer I pointed to my name printed upon my gun-case. “Yes, yes, that is right. It’s John Maple, sure enough!” said he, slowly
spelling it out. “Get in, maister, for we have a bit of a drive before
us.”

The road, white and shining, like all the roads in that limestone
country, ran in long sweeps over the fells, with low walls of loose
stone upon either side of it. The huge moors, mottled with sheep and
with boulders, rolled away in gradually ascending curves to the misty
sky-line. In one place a fall of the land gave a glimpse of a grey angle
of distant sea. Bleak and sad and stern were all my surroundings, and I
felt, under their influence, that this curious mission of mine was a
more serious thing than it had appeared when viewed from London. This
sudden call for help from an uncle whom I had never seen, and of whom I
had heard little that was good, the urgency of it, his reference to my
physical powers, the excuse by which he had ensured that I should bring
a weapon, all hung together and pointed to some vague but sinister
meaning. Things which appeared to be impossible in Kensington became
very probable upon these wild and isolated hillsides. At last, oppressed
with my own dark thoughts, I turned to my companion with the intention
of asking some questions about my uncle, but the expression upon his
face drove the idea from my head. He was not looking at his old, unclipped chestnut horse, nor at the road
along which he was driving, but his face was turned in my direction, and
he was staring past me with an expression of curiosity and, as I
thought, of apprehension. He raised the whip to lash the horse, and then
dropped it again, as if convinced that it was useless. At the same time,
following the direction of his gaze, I saw what it was which had excited
him. A man was running across the moor. He ran clumsily, stumbling and
slipping among the stones; but the road curved, and it was easy for him
to cut us off. As we came up to the spot for which he had been making,
he scrambled over the stone wall and stood waiting, with the evening sun
shining on his brown, clean-shaven face. He was a burly fellow, and in
bad condition, for he stood with his hand on his ribs, panting and
blowing after his short run. As we drove up I saw the glint of earrings
in his ears. “Say, mate, where are you bound for?” he asked, in a rough but
good-humoured fashion. “Farmer Purcell’s, at the Garth Farm,” said the driver. “Sorry to stop you,” cried the other, standing aside; “I thought as I
would hail you as you passed, for if so be as you had been going my way
I should have made bold to ask you for a passage.”

His excuse was an absurd one, since it was evident that our little trap
was as full as it could be, but my driver did not seem disposed to
argue. He drove on without a word, and, looking back, I could see the
stranger sitting by the roadside and cramming tobacco into his pipe. “A sailor,” said I. “Yes, maister. We’re not more than a few miles from Morecambe Bay,” the
driver remarked. “You seemed frightened of him,” I observed. “Did I?” said he, drily; and then, after a long pause, “Maybe I was.” As
to his reasons for fear, I could get nothing from him, and though I
asked him many questions he was so stupid, or else so clever, that I
could learn nothing from his replies. I observed, however, that from
time to time he swept the moors with a troubled eye, but their huge
brown expanse was unbroken by any moving figure. At last in a sort of
cleft in the hills in front of us I saw a long, low-lying farm building,
the centre of all those scattered flocks. “Garth Farm,” said my driver. “There is Farmer Purcell himself,” he
added, as a man strolled out of the porch and stood waiting for our
arrival. He advanced as I descended from the trap, a hard, weather-worn
fellow with light blue eyes, and hair and beard like sun-bleached grass. In his expression I read the same surly ill-will which I had already
observed in my driver. Their malevolence could not be directed towards a
complete stranger like myself, and so I began to suspect that my uncle
was no more popular on the north-country fells than he had been in
Stepney Highway. “You’re to stay here until nightfall. That’s Mr. Stephen Maple’s wish,”
said he, curtly. “You can have some tea and bacon if you like. It’s the
best we can give you.”

I was very hungry, and accepted the hospitality in spite of the churlish
tone in which it was offered. The farmer’s wife and his two daughters
came into the sitting-room during the meal, and I was aware of a certain
curiosity with which they regarded me. It may have been that a young man
was a rarity in this wilderness, or it may be that my attempts at
conversation won their goodwill, but they all three showed a kindliness
in their manner. It was getting dark, so I remarked that it was time for
me to be pushing on to Greta House. “You’ve made up your mind to go, then?” said the older woman. “Certainly. I have come all the way from London.”

“There’s no one hindering you from going back there.”

“But I have come to see Mr. Maple, my uncle.”

“Oh, well, no one can stop you if you want to go on,” said the woman,
and became silent as her husband entered the room. With every fresh incident I felt that I was moving in an atmosphere of
mystery and peril, and yet it was all so intangible and so vague that I
could not guess where my danger lay. I should have asked the farmer’s
wife point-blank, but her surly husband seemed to divine the sympathy
which she felt for me, and never again left us together. “It’s time you
were going, mister,” said he at last, as his wife lit the lamp upon the
table. “Is the trap ready?”

“You’ll need no trap. You’ll walk,” said he. “How shall I know the way?”

“William will go with you.”

William was the youth who had driven me up from the station. He was
waiting at the door, and he shouldered my gun-case and bag. I stayed
behind to thank the farmer for his hospitality, but he would have none
of it. “I ask no thanks from Mr. Stephen Maple nor any friend of his,”
said he, bluntly. “I am paid for what I do.