“Poor child!” she said, soothingly. “You must make up your mind and come.”
“I would not hesitate,” I answered, “if only I could feel certain that—he would not come back here before Olive Berdenstein leaves.”
“We can make sure of it,” she said. “Write and tell him that it would not be safe; he ought not to come.”
Our eyes met, and I felt impelled to ask her a sudden question.
“Do you believe that he killed her brother?”
She looked at me with blanched cheeks and glanced half-fearfully around. From where I sat I could see the black bending branches from that little fir plantation where he had been found.
“What else is there to believe?” she asked. “I heard him myself one awful day—it was long ago, but it seems only like yesterday—I heard him threaten to kill him if ever he found him near again. It was outside the gate there that they met, and then—in the church you remember——”
I held out my hand and stopped her. The moaning of the wind outside seemed like the last cry of that dying man. It was too horrible.
“I cannot stay here,” I cried. “I will go with you whenever you are ready.”