"Then she was coming there," he burst forth. "Too bad! too bad! Didn't you know that? Didn't you ask her in?"
"Yes," said Charlotte, "I asked her in an' she said no, she was goin' down along. An' I stood an' watched her an' she turned off up the rise into the woods."
So it had begun, the terror, the flight. She was going to the hut and, for some reason, not the back way.
"There's somethin' 'tain't right," Charlotte was beginning, but he seized her wrist and held it. To keep her attention, or to feel the touch of something kindly and warm?
"Yes," he said, "something's wrong. Don't tell, Charlotte. Not a word—not to Nan or Jerry or—above all not to Tenney. I'll see to it."
He left her and hurried loping along the road, almost at a run, and Charlotte went in to Nan.
XXI
Raven passed his house and turned into the wood road. There he did not slacken, but took the rise at a great gait. He was at the hut a moment after Tira: she had had time for neither light nor fire.
"It's Raven," he called. She did not come, and he added: "I'm alone. Let me in."