An excerpt:
A SUSPICIOUS country policeman, reporting to his district superintendent certain tragic happenings which he was wholly unable to account for, described Robert Mannering as "a man of good appearance who spoke like a gentleman." That was later in the day, however--say, an hour or more after Mannering raised his eyes from close scrutiny of a small-scale map to gaze in surprise at a heavy bank of black cloud travelling swiftly over the moor from the south-west.
"Wow, wow, and likewise wuff!" said the map-reader aloud, springing upright from a wayside rock. "If that isn't a front-rank thunder storm, I've never seen one; so it's me for the beaten track and some sort of burrow--even a cow-byre."
Without a second's delay he struck into the long, swift strides demanded by a pace of five miles an hour. The straight road in front led through an undulating stretch of moorland. On the right, the heather clothed the flanks of one of the highest hills in Yorkshire. On the left, but at a much greater distance, the crest of another giant seemed to bound the plateau crossed by the road. But appearances are deceptive in great open spaces. The map had been clear enough on this point. Somewhere on that side, probably a mile beyond an upward curve in the heather, a deep valley held a tiny hamlet famous for an ancient church and a Norman crypt.
Mannering, versed in the tricks of a wild country, reasoned that the ground fell too steeply to permit even a bridle-path to cut straight across the moor. But there might. be some narrow cleft down which a sure-footed pedestrian could scramble. Herein the map's contour lines were vague. He had sat down to study them carefully when a sudden darkness warned him of the change in the weather.
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