No doubt she spoke wisely. He left them without a word, though Gladys cried out with alarm to see him going. His shoulders loomed up in the cloud, and as he skirted the lake the gulls rose screaming from its surface to be lost in the sky.
Abner continued his course downhill. Relieved of the weight of Gladys he now felt himself master of his limbs. The hedges and the roughness of the road troubled him no longer, and when he had been walking no more than ten minutes he saw in the growing brilliance of the moonlight a gate that gave on to a metalled road. He strained his ears to listen for any sound, and heard, at length, the noise of a dog howling at the hidden moon. That meant a farm, or at least a shepherd’s cottage. A walk of ten minutes in the direction of the sound brought him within sight of a mass of outbuildings that made a courtyard in front of a low-roofed house. Two long windows on the right of a central doorway were lighted. He saw the shadows of geraniums in pots against the blinds. Another dog came at him out of the darkness, snarling and sniffing him from a distance. He knocked at the door and heard a chair pushed back over the stone floor.
‘Come in . . . come in!’ some one cried.
The farm kitchen was bright, with a heavy brass lamp in the centre of the table and a yellow shade that threw a mild radiance over the many hams and sides of bacon that were slung from the smoky ceiling. The table was laid for supper and a shrewish-looking woman was eating bread and cheese. She stared at Abner with a piece of cheese stuck on the end of her knife, looking neither astonished nor frightened.
‘Who is it, please. And what do you want at this time of night?’ she said, without moving.
‘I’m sorry to put you out, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Me and three others, a woman and two children, lost our way coming over the hills from the fair. The little girl’s had an accident and we had to carry her. Proper done in, they are, and I left them about a mile away over there.’ He pointed in the direction of the hills.
‘Well, I don’t see how I can help you,’ said the woman, who went on eating. ‘The master never has no dealings with gipsies. What’s more, he’s gone to the fair himself in the trap and ban’t back yet.’
Abner explained to her that he was not a gipsy. ‘You can’t leave a woman an’ two kids out there at night,’ he said.’
‘Where did you leave them?’ she asked.
‘Up by a pool. There’s a lot of birds on it. Seagulls, she said.’