“You see well,” added Haldane, “that I am no evil thing, else would good spirits not visit me.”
The humbled sumner laid two silver pennies in her hand, and left the hut with some new ideas in his head.
“Well, my dear, you’ve a brave heart!” said Haldane, when the sound of his footsteps had died away. “I marvel you dared speak. It is well he took you for an angel; but suppose he had not, and had come round the screen to see? When I told you the worst outlaw in the forest would not dare to look in on you, I was not speaking of them. They stick at nothing, commonly.”
“If he had,” said Ermine quietly, “the Lord would have known how to protect me. Was I to leave a troubled soul with the blessed truth untold, because harm to my earthly life might arise thereby?”
“But, my dear, you don’t think he’ll be the better?”
“If he be not, the guilt will not rest on my head.”
The dark deepened, and the visitors seemed to have done coming. Haldane cooked a rabbit for supper for herself and Ermine, not forgetting Gib. She had bolted the door for the night, and was fastening the wooden shutter which served for a window, when a single tap on the door announced a late applicant for her services. Haldane opened the tiny wicket, which enabled her to speak without further unbarring when she found it convenient.
“Folks should come in the day,” she said.
“Didn’t dare!” answered a low whisper, apparently in the voice of a young man. “Can you find lost things?”
“That depends on the planets,” replied Haldane mysteriously.