"Maybe, too, I may find means to bring him back."
"If that might be!" she whispered in a fervour of hope, her whole face lightening and a timorous smile dawning through her tears. "But no!" and the hope died out of her face. "Payment will have to be made for this. You'll see, payment will be made."
She spoke in a low tone of such perfect certainty, that it seemed to me it was not so much the woman who spoke, but that Providence chose her voice that moment for its mouthpiece.
"Heaven send the payment fall to me," I said.
She glanced at me quickly.
"Oh," she said, in a complete change of voice, "what will you tell him?"
"Why, the truth," I answered. "That I found you by the lake, and brought you here."
"No!" she exclaimed, "I will not have you say that. It must be the truth—that I came to you."
She drew a note from her pocket as she spoke, and tossed it on to the table. I picked it up, wondering what she meant. It was a line scribbled in a hand which was familiar to me, and there was a word curiously misspelled—"wateing" for "waiting." Somewhere I had seen that word misspelled precisely in that way before, and surely in this handwriting too. Then the truth flashed upon me. It was in the inn at Commercy, and the handwriting was Jervas Rookley's. The line was this:
"I shall be wateing for you by the lake, on the road to Blackladies."