Chapter Eighteen.
What befell some of them.
For half-an-hour, safely hidden behind a hedge, Robert Purcas watched the door of Johnson’s cottage, until at last he saw the priest come out, and go up the lane for a short distance. Then he stopped, looked round, and gave a low, peculiar whistle. A man jumped down from the bank on the other side of the lane, with whom the priest held a long, low-toned conversation. Robert knew he could not safely move before they were out of the way. At length they parted, and he just caught the priest’s final words.
“Good: we shall have them all afore the even.”
“That you shall not, if God speed me!” said Robert to himself.
The priest went up the lane towards Bentley, and the man who had been talking with him took the opposite way to Thorpe. When his footsteps had died away, Robert crept out from the shelter of the hedge, and made his way in the dark to Johnson’s cottage. A rap on the door brought Cissy.
“Who is it, please?” she said, “because I can’t see.”
“It is Robin Purcas, Cis. I want a word with thy father.”