The Truant Spirit by Sara Seale

with me a little way, to show me the path?”
    “Penruthan?” he said and shook his head. Nay, tes ’aunted. Leave me be with me graves.”
    “Not a little way, Willie?” she said, but he turned his back on her.
    “Nay, not me. You’m proper mazed, missy. Snow’s a-coming.”
    She tried to coax him a little more, but he had sunk into one of his silences and would not respond.
    Soon she began to realise that west over the moor was not as simple as it sounded. The rough tracks crossed and recrossed and sometimes petered out altogether, and presently she abandoned them and struck out across heather and boulder, following her nose as best she might. Bunny had said the moor was rough going; one was evidently not meant to follow a path.
    When she had walked for an hour or more, Sabina knew that she was lost. It was snowing fast now, and already the countryside was covered with a thin film of white. Behind her all trace of the rectory and the little village beyond had long since vanished from sight, and as far as the eye could see the moor stretched endlessly on every side. She began to grow afraid. She had no notion of how far this rough country extended, and she remembered Brock’s tales of the ancient mines and workings, pitfalls for the unwary; dark places in which to break a limb or be lost for ever from sight.
    Her muscles were aching painfully from the unaccustomed exercise and snow blinded her continually, causing her to stumble and fall. But she must go on. Somewhere, sometime, there must be a road; better to go forward and meet what might come than try to retrace her steps in the gathering dusk.
    As she plodded wearily on she thought of Marthe, safe now in the heart of London, and of Tante in her brightly lit hotel, even now, perhaps, drinking an aperitif with M. Bergerac, happily returned from taking his cure, and at the thought of the unknown M. Bergerac, in her imagination so like the sleek maitres d’hotel of her acquaintance, Sabina found herself laughing out loud.
    It was quite dark now. She put out both hands instinctively as the blackness ahead looked suddenly impenetrable, and touched the cold solidity of stone. It was a wall, she thought with surprise, as looking up, she saw the paler darkness of the sky beyond. She must be a little light-headed, she decided, for walls do not rise suddenly out of moorland. A faint creaking sound caused her heart to beat faster, but as she moved towards it and came upon an opening, she knew that it must be a door in the wall, left open and creaking a little in the wind that was getting up. She remembered the hidden door in The Secret Garden, that cherished book of her childhood, and stepped carefully through the opening, knowing that nothing which lay the other side could surprise her.
    At first she could make out little in the darkness. She only knew that the character of the ground had changed, that under the snow lay turf and the slippery smoothness of flagged paths. The ground seemed to rise in terraces and there were broken steps, and a stone balustrade under her hand. As she mounted the last steps her feet crunched on gravel and she saw a house, vast and shuttered, stretching, it seemed, endlessly into the darkness.
    “Penruthan.” she murmured and touched the wet cold walls with undoubting certainty. Had she not walked west as she was told, and had not instinct led her home? It was only then that she knew how tired she was, how much her legs ached and how numb with cold were her hands, indeed, her whole body. She sank down gratefully in the snow and, leaning against the wall of the house, thought blissfully of sleep. She must have dozed while the snow piled in a little drift in her lap, for something woke her. She listened; then as she was about to slip once more into sleep she heard it again; a man’s voice shouting.
    She thought it was her own name that was called, but the mountains played tricks, she remembered, and if you started imagining things you went