"Come now!" he cried. "I will snatch you like a brand from the burning. Come with me! Let us go out together and preach the Master in the Highways and Hedges. Your example shall be as a shining light to guide the feet of those who are snared by riches. Come! The world has called you on one side and the Master on the other, and you have hesitated; and now the call has been made clearer. Choose quickly, before it is too late. Let me take you from the evil that you feel too strong for you. No one can stay us. You shall go like Peter through the prison doors at the call of the Lord, an' in His strength I will hold ye safe."
Meg looked at him, one long earnest look, then away from him, at the familiar hall, where she had danced gaily three months ago. She thought of the portrait of the great-aunt whose eyes always followed her, and who had done something mysteriously "dreadful". Aunt Russelthorpe would say she was as bad, but she wasn't, she was following a call. She thought of her old uncle, who was sleeping through all this commotion; she thought of Laura and Kate; her aunt's words about her father had hurt her so much that she tried not to think of him; she saw again the preacher on the beach, ah! that was the beginning, and to-night only grew out of it; or was the beginning further back still in the days when her father had told her of Lazarus waiting "outside"?
"Choose while ye may," said Barnabas Thorpe. And she put her hand in his with an odd sense that very little "choice" was left.
"You say it is a message?" she said. "Very well. Let it be so—I will go with you."
Mrs. Russelthorpe had stood with lips compressed, rigidly still, during the preacher's extraordinary proposal; she made one faint attempt to stop them now—but it was too late.
Barnabas Thorpe put her aside as easily as he would have brushed away a fly. "You ha' said your say. It was a cruel one," he said. "You ha' done wi' this maid." And they went out together into the night.
The men who had been sent out to search for Meg returned in the early morning. Their mistress met them in the hall; she had evidently taken no rest, and her face in the pitiless daylight looked haggard and worn.
It had been known in the household that Mrs. Russelthorpe and Miss Margaret didn't get on; but the servants whispered to each other now, that Mrs. Russelthorpe took it harder than might have been expected.
Later in the day, the coastguard from the station on the downs brought news of Miss Deane, and told how Barnabas Thorpe had come to his cottage for ropes, and of how they had gone together to the young lady's assistance.