"How is it with my mother and father?"
"I have seen Putt within the last two hours. He stole out to Fox Tor and met me as I came. Your mother keeps calm, for she knows that you are safe; but Mr. Malherb is like one possessed."
"Alas, I can see him and hear him as though I was by."
"Men fear to come to him. There is a settled battle in him against every human soul. Yet a strange thing happened: at a lonely cot yesterday, where he called to learn if they had heard of you, a little girl stood by the door; and he looked at her, then suddenly caught her up and kissed her before he got on his horse again. The child was not feared at his fierceness neither, but laughed into his bloodshot eyes. The mother told Tom Putt."
"Oh, why was I your daughter?"
"Norcot went straight from Widecombe to Dartmouth, so Putt also tells. A deep man—how he hit the critical point—how he knew what was in our heads! He'll have watchers on all the beatable waters, and to-morrow he'll set to work to hunt himself."
"If he should find me, John!"
"Then I'll forgive him. Now farewell for a while. I shall see you again to-morrow night."
They parted, and Grace read the letter that John had brought her. Stark was deeply concerned at her escape; but he wrote not one word of love in this missive. She missed that word, yet knew well how much he had upon his hands and how that this was no time for softness.
And Lee, returning over the Moor, heard a horse's hoofs behind. He had scarcely dived into some old tin-streamer's workings and flung himself flat behind a furze-bush, when Peter Norcot went by in the dim tremor of dawn. So close was he that John saw his eyes were half shut, and that he nodded and nearly slept in his saddle. Light had broken eastward, and already the small life of the Moor stirred amid glimmering grass-blades.