Led by the fox-fire of restlessness, he must have tramped far, for the moon went down and curtains of fog began to draw in, obscuring hills and woods in a wet and blinding thickness. From the saturated foliage came a steady dripping as though there had been heavy rain, and far away, from the life-saving station, wailed the hoarse, Cassandra voices of the sirens. At last physical fatigue began to assert itself with a clearing of the brain and he turned his steps back toward his starting point. He was trusting now to his instinctive sense of direction, because the woods and thickets were fog-choked and his course was groping and uncertain. A half mile from the house he set his foot on a treacherously shelving rock, and found himself rolling down a sharp embankment, with briars tearing his face and hands. Throwing out his right arm, in defense of his eyes, he felt his hand bend back at the wrist with so violent a pain that a wave of nausea swept over him and for a moment he was content to lie where he had fallen, listening to the sobbing drip of the pines. When he rose and started on again his right hand hung with fingers that he could not move and the fever of swollen pain in its wrist. But when he drew near the house he saw that there was still a light in the window of Conscience's room and that she herself sat, framed against, the yellow candle glow, in an almost trance-like attitude of stress. She was silhouetted there, no longer self-confident and defiant but a figure of wistful unhappiness. From the raw wetness, her bare shoulders and arms were unprotected. Her hair fell in heavy braids over the sheer silk of her night dress and her bosom was undefended against the bite of the fog's chill.
At breakfast the next morning Eben Tollman, who was usually the least talkative at table, found that the burden of conversation fell chiefly upon himself.
Conscience was pale and under her eyes were dark smudges of sleeplessness while Farquaharson kept his right hand in his lap and developed an unaccustomed taciturnity. But Eben appeared to notice nothing and stirred himself into an admirable and hospitable vivacity.
His concert of last night had borne fruit, he thought.
If his knowledge of actual occurrences was sketchy his imagination had filled all the blank spaces with colorful substitutes for fact.
"Stuart," he demanded suddenly, "what's happened to you? You've hurt your right hand and you're trying to conceal it."
"It's nothing much," explained Farquaharson lamely. "I went for a walk last night and when the fog came up I strayed over an embankment—and had a rather nasty fall."
"My dear boy!" exclaimed Eben Tollman in a tone of instant solicitude. "We must call the doctor at once. But you must have been out all night. The fog didn't gather until two o'clock this morning."
Farquaharson only nodded with an uncommunicative smile, and Conscience spoke in quiet authority.
"If it's a sprain, I can do as much for it as a doctor could. Wait for me on the terrace, Stuart, I'll be out in a few minutes with hot water and bandages."