a relief to live where he could not even see a woman’s face.  Glaburn was kept in order by two men, who mismanaged it after the fashion of men, but Lord Arleigh was happier there than he had been since his fatal marriage-day, simply because he was quite alone.  If he spent more time in lying on the heather and thinking of Madaline than he did in shooting, that was his own concern—­there was no one to interfere.

One day, when he was in one of his most despairing moods, he went out quite early in the morning, determined to wander the day through, to exhaust himself pitilessly with fatigue, and then see if he could not rest without dreaming of Madaline.  But as he wandered east and west, knowing little and caring less, whither he went, a violent storm, such as breaks at times over the Scottish moors, overtook him.  The sky grew dark as night, the rain fell in a torrent—­blinding, thick, heavy—­he could hardly see his hand before him.  He wandered on for hours, wet through, weary, cold, yet rather rejoicing than otherwise in his fatigue.  Presently hunger was added to fatigue; and then the matter became more serious—­he had no hope of being able to find his way home, for he had no idea in what direction he had strayed.

At last he grew alarmed; life did not hold much for him, it was true, but he had no desire to die on those lonely wilds, without a human being near him.  Then it became painful for him to walk; his fatigue was so great that his limbs ached at every step.  He began to think his life was drawing near its close.  Once or twice he had cried “Madaline” aloud and the name seemed to die away on the sobbing wind.

He grew exhausted at last; for some hours he had struggled on in the face of the tempest.

“I shall have to lie down like a dog by the road-side and die,” he thought to himself.

No other fate seemed to be before him but that, and he told himself that after all he had sold his life cheaply.  “Found dead on the Scotch moors,” would be the verdict about him.

What would the world say?  What would his golden-haired darling say when she heard that he was dead?

As the hot tears blinded his eyes—­tears for Madaline, not for himself—­a light suddenly flashed into them, and he found himself quite close to the window of a house.  With a deep-drawn, bitter sob, he whispered to himself that he was saved.  He had just strength enough to knock at the door; and when it was opened he fell across the threshold, too faint and exhausted to speak, a sudden darkness before his eyes.

When he had recovered a little, he found that several gentlemen were gathered around him, and that one of them was holding a flask of whisky to his lips.

“That was a narrow escape,” said a cheery, musical voice.  “How long have you been on foot?”

“Since eight this morning,” he replied.

“And now it is nearly eight at night!  Well, you may thank Heaven for preserving your life.”