“Yes,” admitted David, “though I have tried to make myself believe it was a mistake. I was coming up Somerset Lane after dark, the first time, and I saw that same light, bobbing and jerking across the broken walls. I stopped and watched and tried to persuade myself that it was fireflies or glow-worms, but I didn’t succeed. A very small light, as you say, and moving slowly but never really coming to rest. I—I don’t quite like it.”
It was growing dusky in the shadow of the pines, so that Betsey began to look about her with a slight uneasiness. The subject was one that did not tend greatly toward making one peaceful or at rest in that lonely place.
“I rather believe Miss Miranda will be looking for us,” she said somewhat lamely at last. David laughed.
“I don’t feel very comfortable here myself,” he agreed, “and it is getting rather dark. Yes, it must be time to go.”
They went along the path together to the gate without speaking, until, with his hand on the lock, David paused and looked back.
“I am going back after it grows really dark,” he said, “to see what that thing is. It ought not to go on.”
“Oh, no,” cried Elizabeth in real horror. “Oh, no!”
“It is something that ought to be cleared up,” David insisted steadily. “If we don’t do it ourselves, we should tell some one who will. The place belongs to Miss Miranda and it should be looked after. Yes, I am going to see about it to-night.”
“Then,” replied Elizabeth with a long and rather gasping breath, “if you will go, I am going with you.”
They did not work very long at their respective tasks that evening. Betsey was an absent-minded helper as she put away the dishes and David, it appeared later, had dropped so many tools and needed to be told so many things twice over, that even Mr. Reynolds had grasped vaguely that something was not quite right and had stopped to gaze at him over his spectacles, in mild and pained astonishment. It was earlier than usual and just at the edge of real darkness, the soft, black dark of a warm spring night before the moon has risen, when David presented himself at the kitchen door for the ostensible purpose of taking Elizabeth home. With rather trembling hands she took off her apron and put away her towels, and prepared to go with him. But their plan was not to be carried out so easily, or without any hitch.