The soft, pearly light of the dawn was stealing in through the narrow opening, and the faint querulous cry of a gull fell upon his ear, and seemed to arouse him to the knowledge that it was once more day—a day he spent in thinking out what he should do.
Time glided slowly on, and a hundred plans had been conceived and rejected. Poll Perrow came and went, never once complaining of the difficulties she experienced in supplying him and herself, and daily did her best to supply him with everything but money. That was beyond her.
And that was the real necessary now. He must have money to enable him to reach London, and then France. So long a time had elapsed, and there had been so terrible a finale to the episode, that he knew he might endeavour to escape unchallenged; and at last, after a long hesitancy and shrinking, and after feeling that there was only one to whom he could go and confide in, and who would furnish him with help, he finally made up his mind.
It was a long process, a constant fight of many hours of a spirit weakened by suffering, till it was swayed by every coward dread which arose. He tried to start a dozen times, but the heavier beat of a wave, the fall of a stone from the cliff, the splash made by a fish, was sufficient to send him shivering back; but at last he strung himself up to the effort, feeling that if he delayed longer he would grow worse, and that night poor old Poll Perrow reached the hiding-place after endless difficulties, to sit down broken-hearted and ready to sob wildly, as she felt that she must have been watched, and that in spite of all her care and secrecy her “poor boy” had been taken away.
Volume Three—Chapter Five.
Brother—Lover.
Trembling, her eyes dilated with horror, Louise Vine stood watching the dimly-seen pleading face for some moments before her lips could form words, and her reason tell her that it was rank folly and superstition to stand trembling there.
“Harry!” she whispered, “alone? yes.”