"No!" said Margaret. "There is no such thing as 'going back,' in reality. Is that Laura making a sign to me? No! it is only the lace curtain moving. He is still asleep, then. Tell me why you came, Barnabas. Had you anything especial to say to me?"
But her glance still rested anxiously on the window.
"Ay, I had some'ut to tell ye," he answered; "though I had nigh forgotten it in seeing ye. I've been a bit fashed about—ye'll be surprised, Margaret—about Mr. Cohen. Do you know whereabouts he lives? Happen, it was a delusion; but yet, I'd as lief be sartain that it's not him who is lyin' murdered i' the marshes."
He paused; but Margaret was too much surprised to speak.
"I'd ha' liked," he went on, more to himself than her, "I'd ha' liked to ha' had it out betwixt him and me, in a fair fight wi' no quarter asked—only I was sworn, and I'm glad I didn't. But that's one thing; and to think o' him bein' struck down from behind, lyin' there alone for days an' nights, helpless i' the sunlight an' the moonlight; cut off wi'out the chance of givin' a free blow; that's different. Where does he live? I must make my mind easy."
Meg was thoroughly roused this time, even to a momentary forgetting of that room upstairs.
"Mr. Sauls murdered!" she said. "It can't be true. What makes you fancy that? It is too horrible; it can't be true!"
She looked at his troubled face anxiously. Had his violent feeling against Mr. Sauls, and his equally strong remorse and efforts to subdue it, given rise to a morbid imagination on the subject? She knew (she understood the preacher better than of old) how violent both his hate and his horror of himself for so hating could be.
"Ay, it's horrible," he answered. "Margaret! when the lust for a man's blood has been strong, and then one hears of a sudden that, mayhap, the man's been killed, one feels as if one's own thought had gotten shape and killed him!"
There was a thrill in the preacher's voice that made Meg draw closer to him. They had reached the end of the square, but she turned again.