Yet they did not separate before they ran into one who knew them both. Thomas Palk met them on a woodland road below Watersmeet.
He stood at the edge of an ascent to Buckland.
"Hullo, Tom! What's brought you out this wet evening?" asked Maynard, and the elder explained that he had been to Green Hayes for news of Mr. Bamsey.
"Master was wishful to hear tidings," he said. "And I had naught on hand and did his pleasure. The doctor was along with Benjamin Bamsey when I got there; so I be taking home the latest."
"And what is it, Mr. Palk?" asked Dinah.
"Bad," he answered. "He's got a lung in a fever and did ought to have seen doctor sooner."
"Good night, then. I must be gone," she said, and without more words left the men and started running.
Palk turned to Lawrence.
"I shouldn't wonder if Bamsey was a goner," he prophesied. "If the breathing parts be smote, then the heart often goes down into a man's belly, so I believe, and can't come up again. And that's death."
The other was silent. For a moment it flitted through his mind that, if such a thing happened, it might go far to simplify Dinah's hold upon the world and make the future easier for them both; but he forgot this aspect in sympathy for Dinah herself. He knew that danger to her foster-father must mean a very terrible grief for her.