“About midnight, I should think,” Macheson answered. “He came down the lane like a drunken man.”
“What was he like?” Hurd asked.
“Small, and I should say a foreigner,” Macheson answered. “He spoke English perfectly, but there was an accent, and when he was asleep he talked to himself in a language which, to the best of my belief, I have never heard before in my life.”
“A foreigner?” Hurd muttered. “You are sure of that?”
“Quite,” Macheson answered. “There could be no mistake about it.”
Stephen Hurd mounted his cob and turned its head towards home. He asked no more questions; he seemed, if possible, graver than ever. Before he started, however, he pointed with his whip towards the shelter.
“You’ve no right there, you know,” he said. “We can’t allow it. You must clear out at once.”
“Very well,” Macheson answered. “I’m trespassing, of course, but one must sleep somewhere.”
“There is no necessity for you to remain in Thorpe at all,” Hurd said. “I think, in the circumstances, the best thing you can do is to go.”
“In the circumstances!” The irony of the phrase struck home. What did this young man know of the circumstances? There were reasons now, indeed, why he should fly from Thorpe as from a place stricken with the pestilence. But no other soul in this world could know of those reasons save himself—and she.