“I understand right enough,” he answered in a surly tone; “but I’ve got to think out for myself which path she’d be likely to take. You wait on the terrace steps, missis, and I’ll see if I can find her.”
He struck into the wood, and made his way rapidly through the branches until he reached a point at which he calculated that Dakin could not hear him. The sky had grown very dark by this time with falling dusk, and the rain-clouds. Here, under the overarching branches, it was difficult even for Stephen’s hawk-eyes to distinguish anything. Stopping still, he uttered three times the same low, peculiar whistle with which he had heralded his approach to the ruined tower. Then he listened, and very faintly, as from some distance, he caught an answering sound.
Again he gave the signal, and this time the responsive whistle was nearer, and the sound of breaking twigs heralded the approach of one or more persons through the brushwood. He hardly knew whether or not to feel surprised when, through an opening of the boughs, he perceived two female figures approaching him. One was Stella, with her white woollen shawl drawn about her head and shoulders, the other was mami Sarah, looking very bent and tiny, as she hobbled along beside her tall companion.
“You are here all right, then,” said the old woman to him. “Good boy—good boy! Now, see this young lady back into the house. She’s been having a little talk with poor old Sarah. She knows old Sarah’s her friend, don’t you, deary?”
The girl bent her head in a dazed fashion, as it seemed to Stephen. He, for his part, utterly failed to understand the whole business.
“I came into the woods to find Miss Cranstoun,” he said, doubtfully. “It was that spy woman sent me. I thought—I hoped,” he stammered, “that you, mami Sarah, might have helped Miss Cranstoun to escape.”
The crone broke into her creaking laugh.
“Leave it to me, Steve,” she muttered; “old Sarah knows her business. Steve needn’t teach his great-grandmother. Remember all I’ve said to you, dearie,” she added, turning to Stella, “and as for this young man, though you’re Miss Cranstoun of the Chase, he’s your cousin, and you may trust him. Now, good-night to you, my dearies, both. A handsome pair they make, a handsome pair!”
So, muttering and gibbering to herself, old Mrs. Lee disappeared again among the trees, huddled in her hooded cloak, and as like the realization of a witch in a fairy-tale as could be imagined, leaving Stephen and Stella standing opposite each other in the dusk, while the rain pattered on the branches above their heads.
Stephen was the first to break the silence. Some strange fear of the girl possessed him; he had always been in awe of her, and her unmoved manner of receiving Sarah’s communication struck him as being out of place and strange.