So in the bleak beginning of that cold January day this new-made man came to his journey’s end. Nightingale Roughs was as wild as its name: an unfrequented wilderness sloping down from Glatting Wood and up to the strip of level heath that skirted the northern flank of the little rural town called Glatting City. It was a region deserted and all but forgotten; primitively wild, full of rank growth; a no man’s land between Marden and Glatting that had never, within living memory, suffered taming by sickle or plough, though rumour said it had once been used as a sheepwalk. Lying a full two miles from the track between Fee and City, it now lived its secret life unmolested by man. In effect, though not geographically, it was remote from both places, and the outcast therefore chose it for his own. Here a man could hide his face and nurse his hatred and grow proud in his isolation, always provided he did not perish of cold. Harry Noke had no intention of perishing, and it was perhaps his good fortune that the business of keeping alive occupied him to the exclusion of revengeful dreams. Nature was an enemy more to be feared, and more worthy of battle, than those pesty villagers, whose malice, he knew, had varied directly with their envy of his amorous pleasures. What would they have done in my place, he grumbled to himself. But there were many more urgent questions to be answered. How to keep the cold out of his belly: that was his first concern. He had brought a store of food with him, and some horse-fodder; and he had, to begin with, a sufficient supply of firing. He contrived, as he had done before on Dyking Common, to get some sort of shack over his head before nightfall; and, weary though he was, did not neglect to set half a dozen rabbit-snares before turning in. The horse must share his house till warmer weather came; but, even so, this was the coldest and loneliest night he had ever known, and, being what he was, he could not fail to recall having heard a queer account of this desolate region: how in a past century a murder had been done here, and how at midnight a dismembered ghost came haunting the scene of its impious enlargement: a bodiless head with wide eyes and streaming hair. And another death was still all too fresh in his memory; for the ill-favoured rogue that had shot the dog Roger was but a few days in his grave. That memory, having been obscured by more recent distresses, now returned with a fresh vividness. Lying cold and wakeful in his dark cubby-hole, with the wind moaning outside and whistling in at a score of cracks, he saw again the staring face of the dead man in the grass: evil, distorted by anger, a livid-grey face with a black ball of tongue pointing out at him; and it flashed into his mind that perhaps all the evil that had befallen him since had been that dead man’s doing. His thoughts addressed themselves to this infernal avenger. You coon’t get me strung up, so this is what you done. Tain’t fair dealing, mate. Tain’t fair, tellee. You’ve no call to come worritten me. I can’t fight wi’ ghostses, can I now? Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways . . . But the magic of prayer did not avail, for he could not believe himself in favour with heaven. The evil vision stayed; the eyes stared; the tongue pointed. Go to bed, blast you, and lea’ me to mine. God rot ye and hell take ye . . . But curses were no better; and not till he remembered the dog Roger did he get relief from the vile obsession. Good Roger. At ’im, Roger. Bite the baastard, Roger. Ghost against ghost: twas a rare notion. He laughed at his own cunning. And the dead man rose from the grass and slunk away, with Roger snapping savagely at his heels.