“I hope so; with news. I shall go and see Sir John and Lady O’Hara, tell them your story, and get you pardoned.”
“No. The governor did what he could: I was allowed to go out as an assigned servant; I have disgraced myself, and I should have to go back to the gang.”
“Not if he knew that you were innocent.”
“My character with which I came out spoils that, boy. Don’t talk about it. Mine is a hopeless case.”
“But Lady O’Hara is my friend.”
“Hush! It is too late.”
They went on and on through the obscurity in comparative silence now, Nic feeling as if he were being led always by that black shadow of a gigantic man, beyond which there was a faint glow.
Always the same tramp, tramp through the splashing water, and along its soft bed, which was never more than four or five feet wide at that time, and the flowing stream kept them easily in the right way. Once or twice Nic felt startled at the want of light from the smouldering torch, but a few waves in the air brightened its faint glow again, and they went on and on as if their journey were to be right through the grim bowels of the world.
“Is it much farther?” said Nic at last, to break the painful silence.
“Not much.”