“’Tis for that reason I tell you, that you may warn them they must go.”
“Why did you not tell Mistress Ann herself?” asked Joan, with strange quietness. “If you think, as you say, she is concerned with the gang?”
“I will tell her when I meet her next,” said Tregenna, promptly. “She has challenged me to go some night and find out for myself the truth of the tales the folks tell about the haunted barn. She——”
But Joan interrupted him, with a sudden look of intense anxiety—
“She challenged you to go at night? To the great barn?”
“Ay, that she did. And I accepted her invitation.”
“But you will not go! You must not! ’Twould not be safe——”
Joan uttered the words with great earnestness; but stopped, blushing, when she had got so far. Tregenna took up her words—
“Not safe! How mean you? Surely my safety is the last thing you would concern yourself with. ’Tis for the safety of these smuggling folk alone that you care.”
Joan looked down, and said nothing. But it was plain by the heaving of her breast and by her labored breathing, that she was much agitated.