He left the Lovelace after drinking a pint of Dorchester ale. The night was cool and fragrant. The sky was covered now by a grey film of feathery clouds, through which neither moon nor stars were visible except as a faint diffused luminosity, which lifted the weight of darkness from the earth, but turned the world into a place of phantoms and shadows.

Wolf decided to follow the shorter and easier way home. This was the highroad to Blacksod that ran along the top of the ridge dividing Dorset from Somerset; and as he strode between the phantasmal wheat-fields of that exposed upland, his thoughts took many a queer turn. So Mattie and Olwen were left penniless! That was evidently going to be the upshot of the hatter’s death. And the question was, what was to become of them? If it had not been for the child’s insane hostility to Christie, the natural course would have been for Olwen to return to her father’s dwelling. The chances were that the local authorities, unless Miss Gault took upon herself to meddle again, would not interfere. Then his mind reverted to his mother.