Chapter Twenty Seven.
“It was in and about the Mart’mas time
When the green leaves they were falling.”
Old Ballad.
That afternoon, when Captain Orde fell in with David Stephens, the two men had walked together to within a hundred yards of the Red House. Here, for it was almost dark, Captain Orde struck into one of the fields which would take him to Hardlands, and the other, standing for a moment as if lost in thought, went on through the red mud and the quantities of fallen leaves which had dropped from the hedge-row elms by his side.
As he passed along the wall enclosing Mr Mannering’s garden, a door opened, and Stokes came out, locking the door after him. David had stopped, and his peculiar figure probably marked him sufficiently even in the waning light, for the gardener said in a slow and rather injured voice,—
“That’s you, is it?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“And you’m going to see Faith?”
“Yes, I am,” said Stephens; and the two men walked on side by side in silence.