"I promised Barnabas that I would not stay," said Margaret; but a quiver passed over her face. Laura drew her gently out of the room and shut the door.
"I could not tell you in there," she said, with the sentiment that we all have against talking of mundane matters in the chamber of death, "but I have a message for you from your husband. I went down to give him the address you asked me for yesterday, because I wished to speak to him, to see for myself what sort of a man he is. While I was speaking to him he"—Laura hesitated a second—"he was summoned away. He bid me tell you that he may be absent several days, but that you were not to 'fash' about him, but just bide quiet; if he were not here when the end came, I told him I would take you back with me. He said you would know that he would come for you so soon as ever he could."
"Yes, I know," said Meg simply. "What was the call?"
"He said he was called to a place where he could not have you by him."
Laura coloured, wondering what the next question would be; but Meg was apparently satisfied.
The preacher's movements were apt to be erratic, and his decisions were often arbitrary. The "call" might probably be to some abode of vice and misery into which he shrank from taking her.
"Are you sure you want me, Laura?"
"Quite sure," said Laura emphatically.
She put her arm round her sister while she spoke, and the two left the house together. Barnabas Thorpe had been arrested on Mrs. Russelthorpe's doorstep before Laura's eyes; but there was, she assured herself, no need to tell Meg that, just now.
If he were innocent he would be set free again, and would come to claim his wife quite soon enough; if he were guilty—but no! oddly enough, Laura found it simply impossible to believe him guilty. The big gaunt man with the deeply furrowed face and the eager eyes, that had the look of the enthusiast and potential martyr in them, had impressed her curiously. Laura had felt no name too bad for the canting rascal who had stolen Margaret; but the reality and intense personality of the preacher had at least momentarily pierced through her prejudice.