“Make haste, Mary,” she said hurriedly. “Bring brandy and wine, and join me there.”
“My dear Miss Gartram, are you going to the scene of the accident?”
Claude looked at him in an absent way.
“I am going to the Woodhams’ cottage,” she said hurriedly. “Sarah Woodham was our old servant. Don’t stop me, please.”
She hurried along the narrow road leading west, and it was not until she had gone some hundred yards following the messenger, who was trotting heavily at Gartram’s heels, that she realised that she was not alone.
“Mr Glyddyr!” she exclaimed.
“Pray pardon me,” he said, in a low, earnest voice. “As a friend, I cannot let you go alone at a time like this.”
Claude looked up at him wildly, but there was so much respectful deference in his manner that she could say nothing. In fact, her thoughts were all with the suffering man and woman—the victims of this deplorable mishap.
It was nearly half-a-mile along the rough cliff road; and it was traversed in silence, Claude being too much agitated to say more.
The scene was easy enough to find when they were approaching the place, for a knot of rough quarry workmen were gathered round a clean-looking, white-washed cottage, from out of whose open door came the harsh tones of a man’s voice, while the crowd parted left and right, and several placed the short black pipes they were smoking hurriedly in their pockets.