Just then the soft, wet sound of feet tramping in mud came to him, and apparently the sound of his own feet was heard also, for the talking stopped until he had passed them.  He discerned their figures, but so dimly he could hardly have told they were man and woman had he not known it before by their voices.  They were walking very fast, and so was he.  In a moment or two they were out of sight, and he had ceased to hear their footsteps.  Then he heard them speak again, but the wind blew their words from him.

The tones, the accent, of the woman who had been speaking, told that she was what, in good old English, used to be called a lady.  Alec Trenholme, who had never had much to do with well-bred women, was inclined to see around each a halo of charm; and now, after his long, rough exile, this disposition was increased in him tenfold.  Here, in night and storm, to be roused from the half lethargy of mechanical exercise by the modulations of such a voice, and forced by the strength of its feeling to be, as it were, a confidant—­this excited him not a little.  For a few moments he thought of nothing but the lady and what he had heard, conjecturing all things; but he did not associate her with the poor people he had been told were to meet that night upon the mountain.

Roused by the incident, and alert, another thought came quickly, however.  He was getting past the large black hill, but the lane turning to it he had not found.  Until he now tried with all his might to see, he did not fully know how difficult seeing was.

The storm was not near enough to suggest danger, for there was still more than a minute between each flash and its peal.  As light rain drifted in his face, he braced himself to see by the next flash and remember what he saw; but when it came he only knew that it reflected light into the pools on the road in front of him, and revealed a black panorama of fence and tree, field and hill, that the next moment, was all so jumbled in his mind that he did not know where to avoid the very puddles he had seen so clearly, and splashed on through them, with no better knowledge of his way, and eyes too dazzled to see what otherwise they would have seen.  In this plight he did not hesitate, but turned and ran after the two he had met, to ask his way, thinking, as he did so, that he must have already passed the lane.

With some effort he caught them up.  They must have heard him coming, for their voices were silent as he approached.  He asked for the lane to Cooper’s Farm, which he had been told was the name of the house at the foot of the mountain path.  They both hesitated in their walk.  The man, who ought to have answered, seemed, for some reason, suddenly dumb.  After waiting impatiently, the lady took upon herself to reply.  She said they had not yet reached the turning to the farm.  She remarked that they were going to the same place.