“Sister, your Saviour knows everything. Won't you come in and lay your guilt before Him?” he asked insinuatingly, putting his hand on her arm.
Charity started back and flushed. For a moment she thought the evangelist must have heard a report of the scene at Nettleton; then she saw the absurdity of the supposition.
“I on'y wish't I had any to lay!” she retorted, with one of her fierce flashes of self-derision; and the young man murmured, aghast: “Oh, Sister, don't speak blasphemy....”
But she had jerked her arm out of his hold, and was running up the branch road, trembling with the fear of meeting a familiar face. Presently she was out of sight of the village, and climbing into the heart of the forest. She could not hope to do the fifteen miles to the Mountain that afternoon; but she knew of a place half-way to Hamblin where she could sleep, and where no one would think of looking for her. It was a little deserted house on a slope in one of the lonely rifts of the hills. She had seen it once, years before, when she had gone on a nutting expedition to the grove of walnuts below it. The party had taken refuge in the house from a sudden mountain storm, and she remembered that Ben Sollas, who liked frightening girls, had told them that it was said to be haunted.
She was growing faint and tired, for she had eaten nothing since morning, and was not used to walking so far. Her head felt light and she sat down for a moment by the roadside. As she sat there she heard the click of a bicycle-bell, and started up to plunge back into the forest; but before she could move the bicycle had swept around the curve of the road, and Harney, jumping off, was approaching her with outstretched arms.
“Charity! What on earth are you doing here?”
She stared as if he were a vision, so startled by the unexpectedness of his being there that no words came to her.
“Where were you going? Had you forgotten that I was coming?” he continued, trying to draw her to him; but she shrank from his embrace.
“I was going away—I don't want to see you—I want you should leave me alone,” she broke out wildly.
He looked at her and his face grew grave, as though the shadow of a premonition brushed it.