“Excuse me, but perhaps you are not aware that this wood is private?”
The stranger made three or four steps forward, till he stood close beside the pony chair.
“Oh yes,” he said, “of course I know that. You—you did not receive my letter?”
“You are—you are Alwyn!” gasped Edgar, breathless and dizzy with the shock that came without a moment’s doubt or a moment’s warning.
“Edgar! Yes, yes, I wrote. I did not mean to take you by surprise. But it is I—prepared for what welcome you will give me.”
Edgar was so near fainting that welcome of any sort was beyond his power; but, as his senses came back, he saw Alwyn leaning over him, looking at him with frightened eyes, not daring to lift, hardly to touch him, and almost as much taken aback as himself by the unexpected state in which he found him.
Edgar lay looking at him for a moment or two.
“Then—you are alive?” he said slowly.
“Yes,” said Alwyn, “I wrote to you to ask you if you would see me. I gave the letter to a boy, here in the wood—”
“He lost it,” said Edgar, still as if half awake.