But presently from the back part of the rooms, there came to his listening ears a long, shrill cry.
CHAPTER IV. CLAIRE’S APOLOGY.
The effect of that cry upon Bram Elshaw was to set him tingling in every nerve.
The lawn which ran the length of the farmhouse was wide, and sloped down to a straggling hedge just inside the low stone wall which surrounded the garden and the orchard. Up and down this lawn Bram walked with hurried footsteps, uncertain what to do. For although he recognized Claire’s voice, the cry she had uttered seemed to him to indicate surprise and horror rather than pain, so that he did not feel justified in entering the house by the way she had done until he felt more sure that his assistance was wanted, or that his intrusion would be welcome.
In a very few moments, however, he heard her cry—“Don’t, don’t; oh, don’t! You frighten me!”
Bram, who was by this time close to the door, knocked at it loudly.
Waiting a few moments, on the alert for any fresh sounds, and hearing nothing, he then made his way round to the back of the house, leaping over the rough stone wall which divided the garden from the farmyard, and tried the handle of the back door.
This also was fastened on the inside.
But at the very moment that Bram lifted the latch and gave the door a rough shake he heard a sound like the clashing of steel upon stone, a scuffle, a suppressed cry, and upon that, without further hesitation, Bram put his sinewy knee against the old door, and at the second attempt burst the bolt off.