"You were very busy with Mary Tyson," said she.
"She was talking to me of the landmarks," said I.
"But one cannot see them," said she, looking towards the hillside.
I stood silent by her side. It was not that Mary Tyson's words had so greatly impressed me. I believed, indeed, that she spoke out of an overmastering jealousy for the girl's welfare. But I asked myself, since she had said so much, knowing so little of me, what would she have said had she known the truth? The temptation to set the sheriff on my path would long ago, I was certain, have become an accomplished act. Nor could I have blamed her. I was brought back to my old thought that I was wearing this girl's friendship as a thief may wear a stolen cloak.
"There is something I ought to tell you," said I suddenly, and came to a no less sudden stop, the moment that the sound of the words told me whither I was going. "But at this time," I continued in the lamest of conclusions, "I have no right to tell it you," and so babbled a word or two more.
She gave a little quiet laugh, and instead of answering me, began to hum over to herself that melody of "The Honest Lover." In the midst of a bar she broke off. I heard her breath come and go quickly. She turned and ran into the house.
That night, at all events, I acted upon an impulse of which I have never doubted the rectitude. Since I could not restore to her the stolen cloak, I took that other course, and dropped it by the wayside. I wrote a brief note of thanks to Mr. Curwen, and when the house was quiet, I crept from my room along the passage, and dropping out of that window which my host had shown me on the night of my coming to Applegarth, betook me under the star-shine across the fells.
CHAPTER XV.
[I REVISIT BLACKLADIES.]
That night I lay in the bracken on the hillside looking down into Ennerdale. Far below I could see one light burning in an upper window at the eastern side of Applegarth. It burned in Dorothy's chamber, and its yellow homeliness tugged at my heart as I lay there, the lonesome darkness about me, the shrill cry of the wind in my ears. The light burned very late that night. The clouds were gradually drawn like a curtain beneath the stars, and still it burned, and it was the blurring of the rain which at the last hid it from my sight.