He stopped, threw down Dunce's reins, and started off towards the high ground, striding over heather and furze, with his free backwoodsman's step.
Andrews looked after him. “If that be any man alive it be Mr. Locke Harper! O Lord! and I didn't know 'un—my dear old master! Mr. Harper! Sir! Mr. Locke Harper.” He ran a little way in vain pursuit of the retreating figure; then Agatha saw him sit down on a stone, hide his face in his shaking old hands, and cry for joy.
While, far over the hill-side, in very sight of the closed blinds of Anne's room, the returned wanderer strode away, and disappeared.
It was some time before Agatha could summon courage to walk up-stairs. All things seemed so strange. She could hardly realise the fact that she had been driven from Kingcombe by Uncle Brian's own self, and that she was now going to tell Anne Valery that he was here.
At last, calmed by faith in heaven, and in that next holiest faith, love, she opened the door of Anne's bedroom.
It was silent, solemn, and peaceful. There was a prayer-book by the bedside, open at one of the Christmas-day psalms. No one lingered in the room, or about the couch, with sisterly or friendly care; all was serene but lonely, as Anne's whole life had been. At the opening of the door, a faint voice asked, “Who is there?”
“Only I! Oh, Anne, dearest Anne!”
There was a pause of weeping silence, though one only wept. Miss Valery soothed the girl in all sorts of tender ways.
“You have suffered much, my poor child, but it is over now. Forget it. You will be very happy now.”
“And you too—you too, Anne! But why do you lie here so drearily, with no one near you?”