“I’m keeping nothing back.”
“You are. I can see it in your face. What is it that you will not tell? What do you fear?”
“The gallows—for one thing.”
“You’d sooner see Sisily lose her life on them?”
This bitter taunt, wrung from the depth of the young man’s anguished heart, had an instantaneous and unexpected effect on his companion.
“No, no!” he hoarsely cried, “I couldn’t a’ bear that. But it’s nothing to tell, nothing to help. It was earlier that night, before she came. I was looking out of the kitchen window, when I thought I saw a rock move. Then I looked again, and it seemed like a man—though I couldn’t see his face.”
“Is that all?” Bitter disappointment rang in Charles’s voice. “That might have been me. I was out on the rocks that night, close to Flint House.”
“‘Tweren’t you.” Thalassa’s reply was so low as to be almost inaudible. “I don’t know who it was, but I’ll take my Bible oath it weren’t you.”
“Who was it then?” Charles asked breathlessly.
“A dead man, or his spirit. I know that now, though I laughed when he said it. I know better now.”