Read "The Prophet's Mantle" by Edith Nesbit online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
To run at full speed across a Derbyshire moor by the uncertain light of a wintry moon is a feat not unattended with difficulty and danger, especially when the runner is not quite accustomed to the course; but it would have taken greater pitfalls than even those moors present to have made Count Litvinoff choose a longer and easier way. For when that shout had been borne to him on the wind he scented excitement and danger, and excitement and danger were to him as the breath of life. He was almost certain that the men meant mischief, and he intended to do his best to prevent it. His sympathies really were, as he had told Roland, entirely with them, and he was genuinely anxious that they should not add a criminal prosecution for riot to their other troubles. At the same time he looked forward with some pleasure to the scene in which he was now hastening to take a part.
He had been in a fretful and irritable state of mind ever since he had left London, and he cordially welcomed a row, and did not care much if in that row he got a knock on the head that would put an end to his visit and his life at the same time. At any rate, the situation offered a chance of action, and it was action more than anything that he had been longing for lately.