“Well, this is most unexpected,” said Reed warmly. “Here, Sturgess, I shall come over again to-morrow about eleven. Be here with the men, and you had better bring a couple of lanthorns.”
“Hadn’t I better come on to put you in the right road?”
“What! Oh, no! I shall manage. That will do.” The man turned away with the look upon his countenance intensifying; but it was not observed, for Reed walked off in company with his new acquaintance, the pair chatting away as if they had known each other for years.
“Quite gave me a scare,” said the Major. “Life here is so uneventful. Very beautiful, but lonely, especially in the winter.”
“But you do not stay here in the winter?”
“Oh yes; I have lived here ten years now.”
“No accounting for taste,” thought Reed; and he glanced sidewise at his companion, but learned nothing. He only saw a quiet-looking country gentleman, whose sun-browned face told of an open-air life.
Sturgess followed them to the great natural gateway at the end of the chasm, where he had stood some days before, but not alone; and he now remained watching them as they went on westward along the narrow path, and round by the huge buttress formed by the refuse of the mine, carried and cast down there for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Then as they passed on out of sight, the man raised one of his fingers to his lips, and began gnawing roughly at the side of the nail, till he seemed to make up his mind, and took a step or two forward after them, next stopped short again, for a hail came from behind.
“Coming on down to the village, Mr Sturgess?”
He turned and faced one of the two men, and nodded, walking away with him in the other direction, taciturn and strange, answering his companion in monosyllables, and with his thoughts evidently far away. Not so very, though, for they were with Clive Reed, and promised him no good.