It wanted less than a fortnight to the event, and all was in readiness for it. Humphrey Baskerville had sent Cora twenty pounds, and she had visited him and thanked him personally for his goodness. The old man had also seen Ned, and although his nephew heard few compliments and came from the interview in a very indignant frame of mind, yet it was felt to be well that Humphrey had thus openly suffered the past to be obliterated.
Then came a midnight when Priscilla Lintern, lying awake and full of anxious thoughts, heard upon the silence a sound. At first she believed it to be the four feet of some wandering horse as he struck the ground with his hoofs in leisurely fashion, and slowly passed along the deserted road; then she perceived that it was the two feet of a man moving briskly and carrying him swiftly forward. The feet stopped, the outer wicket gate was opened, and some one came to the door. Priscilla's window looked forth from a thatched dormer above, and now she threw it up and leant out. She knew by intuition the name of the man below.
"Is that you, Jim?" she asked.
"Yes'm. Master's took cruel bad and can't fetch his breath. He knocked me up, and I went first for Miss Gollop, who was to home luckily. Then I comed for you."
Mrs. Lintern was already putting on her clothes.
"You'd best to go back," she said. "I'll be up over at once, after I've waked up my son and sent him riding for doctor."
Fifteen minutes later Heathman, still half asleep, cantered on a pony through a rainy night for medical help, and his mother hastened up to 'The White Thorn,' and steeled her heart for what she might find there.
She had long learned to conceal all emotion of spirit, and she knew that under no possible stress of grief or terror would truth have power to escape the prison of her heart.