The moor-birds screamed and circled in restless flight around him. They
were plainly protesting against his intrusion into their domain. They
shrilled and dived in their flight, almost touching the bent head, with
swooping wing, to rise again, cleaving the air and sheering round again;
but still the lonely figure sat looking into darkness, becoming numbed
with cold, and all unconscious of the passage of time.
Gradually the cold began to tell upon him, and he started to his feet,
plodding up the hill, through the soft mossy yielding soil. Back again
he came after a time, his limbs aching with the long night's tramping;
but yet he never thought of going home or turning towards the village.
"Oh, Mysie!" he groaned again and again, and all night long only these
two words escaped his lips. They came in a low sad tone, like the wind
coming through far-off trees; but they were vibrant with suffering, and
only the moor-birds cried in answer.
"Oh, Mysie!" and the winds sighed it again and again, as they came
wandering down out of the stillness between the hills, to pass on into
the silence of the night again, like lost souls wandering through an
uncreative world, proclaiming to other spheres the doom that had settled
upon earth.
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