“Hallo-o-o, Barty!” he shouted.
“Halloo-o-o, Stafford!” Barty responded cheerfully. “What’s been keeping you so late? I was beginning to get a bit uneasy.”
Stafford made no answer, but came on at a very much quickened pace, dragging the sack behind him over the rough ground.
“Leadenhall!” he said. He stood still, looking anxiously about him. The flickering light of the fire illumined a small cleared space in the dark woodland, and there was no one there but Barty. “Didn’t some one else come?” he demanded sharply.
“Some one else?” said Barty, with a laugh. “Expecting callers?”
Then Stafford told him.
At first it seemed to Barty preposterous, and even a little annoying, that the alert and self-reliant Jacko should have got herself lost in this fashion. The trail up from the landing was perfectly clear and easy to follow, and Stafford had given her his flash light.
Barty went all the way down to the lake again, calling her name. Then, as he stood on the shore of the black water, the note in his voice changed. A fitful wind had sprung up, driving clouds across the face of the moon. The trees stirred and sighed.[Pg 216] No matter what feminine folly had induced her to leave the trail, she had left it. She was gone, beyond reach of his voice. Which way?
He remembered Stafford’s words—hard words for a young man of his temper to swallow.
“You accepted the responsibility for her life and her happiness,” Stafford had said; “and you left her—a young, lovely thing like that. I think you failed her pretty badly, Leadenhall!”