Grandpa’s face, in his new knowledge, was pitiful to see. He had evidently been trying to remain calm, and he had succeeded so far as to keep his features firm; but his cheeks, which ordinarily were tinted with pink, had turned to a dead-looking yellow. “I should be greatly obliged if you would come with me for a walk,” he said to Eve; “I have travelled down from Gary Hundred this morning, and, after being shut up in the train, you know, one feels the need of fresh air.” He rose, and gave first one leg and then the other a little shake, with a pathetic pretence of preparing for vigorous exercise.
“I don’t think I can go,” Eve began. But a second glance at his dead-looking face made her relent, or rather made her brace herself. She rang the bell, and asked one of the chamber-maids to follow them with Jack; once outside, she sent the girl forward. “I have taken Jack because we cannot trust Cicely,” she explained. “If she had him, she might, in our absence, take him and start back to the island; but she will not go without him.”
“Neither of them must go back,” said the judge. He spoke mechanically.
They went down the shaded street towards the Battery. “And there’s Sabrina, too, poor girl! How do we know what has happened to her!” Eve hesitated. Then she said, slowly, “Cicely tells me that when these attacks are on him, he is dangerous only to herself and Jack.”
“That makes him only the greater devil!” answered the judge. “What I fear is that he is already on her track; he would get over the attack soon—he is as strong as an ox—and if he should reach her,—have a chance at her with his damned repentant whinings—We must get off immediately! In fact, I don’t understand why you are stopping here at all,” he added, with sudden anger.
“We couldn’t go on; the track is under water somewhere. And perhaps we need not hurry so.” She paused. “I suppose you know that Cicely will go only to Paul Tennant,” she added. “She refuses to go anywhere else.”
“Where the devil is the man?”
“It’s a place called Port aux Pins, on Lake Superior. I really think that if we don’t take her to him at once, she will leave us and get back to Ferdie, in spite of all we can do.”
“If there’s no train, we’ll take a carriage, we’ll drive,” declared the judge. “This is the first place he’ll come to; we won’t wait here!”
“There’ll be a train this evening; they tell me so at the hotel,” Eve answered. Then she waited a moment. “We shall have to stop on the way, Cicely is so exhausted; I suppose we go to Pittsburgh, and then to Cleveland to take the lake steamer; if you should write to Miss Sabrina from here, the answer might meet us at one of those places.”