"And indeed I would not lose it," I replied. "In my heart of hearts I know that I would not lose it."
"What is it, then, you mean to do?" she asked.
"To travel with my friend as far as Ravenglass, to set her safe on board the Swallow, and then—somewhere there is a man in prison whose place is mine."
"You do not know where?" she exclaimed suddenly.
"No," said I, "but——"
She interrupted me with a cry.
"Look!" she said hurriedly, and pointed to a little window close beneath the roof. Through that window the moonlight was creeping like a finger down the wall, across the floor. "The storm has cleared; we can go."
She rose abruptly from her seat, and moved out into the chancel Something—was it the hurry of her movement, the tension of her voice?—made me spring towards her. I remembered that, when I spoke to her on the hillside near Penrith, it had seemed to me then that she had some inkling of the truth.
"You know!" I exclaimed—"you know where the prisoner is?"
"No," she cried, and her voice rose almost to a scream belying the word she spoke.