He pitched the note, and the congregation took up the second line with a rolling, gathering volume of song. It broke on the night like the footfall of a regiment at charge. Honoria scrambled off Taffy’s back, and the two slipped away to the high road.
“Shall you tell your father?”
“I—I don’t know.”
She stooped and found a loose stone. “He shan’t find salvation to-night,” she said heroically.
As the stone crashed through the window the two children pelted off. They ran on the soft turf by the wayside, and only halted to listen when they reached Tredinnis’s great gates. The sound of feet running far up the road set them off again, but now in opposite ways. Honoria sped down the avenue, and Taffy headed for the Parsonage, across the towans. Ordinarily this road at night would have been full of terrors for him; but now the fear at his heels kept him going, while his heart thumped on his ribs. He was just beginning to feel secure, when he blundered against a dark figure which seemed to rise straight out of the night.
“Hullo!”
Blessed voice! The wayfarer was his own father.
“Taffy! I thought you were home an hour ago. Where on earth have you been?”
“With Honoria.” He was about to say more, but checked himself. “I left her at the top of the avenue,” he explained.