Yet the lady of Huntercombe Hall sat on, sick at heart, but patient, beneath that solemn sky.
She shuddered a little as the cold dews gathered on her, for she was a woman nursed in luxury's lap; but she never moved.
The silence was dismal. Had that wild boy forgotten his promise, or were there no parents in the village, that their feet lagged so?
It was nearly ten o'clock, when her keen ears, strained to the utmost, discovered a faint buzzing of voices; but where she could not tell.
The sounds increased and increased, and then there was a temporary silence; and after that a faint hallooing in the wood to her right. The wood was five hundred acres, and the bulk of it lay in front and to her left.
The hallooing got louder and louder; the whole wood seemed to echo; her heart beat high; lights glimmered nearer and nearer, hares and rabbits pattered by and startled her, and pheasants thundered off their roosts with an incredible noise, owls flitted, and bats innumerable, disturbed and terrified by the glaring lights and loud resounding halloos.
Nearer, nearer came the sounds, till at last a line of men and boys, full fifty carrying torches and lanterns, came up, and lighted up the dew-spangled leaves, and made the mother's heart leap with joyful hope at succor so powerful.
Oh, she could have kissed the stout village blacksmith, whose deep sonorous lungs rang close to her. Never had any man's voice sounded to her so like a god's as this stout blacksmith's “hilloop! hilloop!” close and loud in her ear, and those at the end of the line hallooed “hillo-op; hillo-op!” like an echo; and so they passed on, through bush and brier, till their voices died away in the distance.
A boy detached himself from the line, and ran to Lady Bassett with a traveling rug. It was Reginald.
“You put on this,” said he. He shook it, and, standing on tiptoe, put it over her shoulders.