"Ay, need we!" cried Ratcliffe, half surlily. "How know we that the feud-call has not gone round, to carry the Waynes on the old trail of vengeance? As 'tis, we have driven it over late, thanks to thy doublings, Margaret. Come, yond passing-bell should warn thee how the time slips by."
But she kept a tight hold on the gate, and looked down the wet path toward where the Wayne vault-stone stared blue and cold at the cold moon. "'Tis uncanny," she whispered, shivering. "Know'st thou 'tis his bell, Dick, that rings for our journey? I dare not pass the vault down yonder—-it stares at me, as if I had killed him—Dick, 'twas not I that killed him—why should the stone look up and curse me.
"Pish! Art unstrung, Meg. The vault-stone is as dead—as Wayne of Marsh. Come away, I tell thee; I can hear the rattle of harness-gear, and the chaise will be waiting tor us at the tavern doorway. I sent a horseman to Saxilton for it two hours agone, and it must be here by now."
Mistress Wayne left clinging to the gate; but still she could not move forward. "I dread it so! The storm, and the wildness, and—and the graves. Dick, 'tis too good to be true that we should win free of this cruel moor! Ever since I came here, I have feared and hated it—and now its arms are closing round me—I can feel them, Dick, as if they had bone and muscle——"
Ratcliffe of Wildwater laughed noisily, for his own spirits were yielding to the touch of time and circumstance, and he strove to lighten them. "Shalt never see the moor again, sweetheart, nor I either. 'Tis Saxilton first, and after that a swift ride to some nook of the valleys where they have never heard of Waynes and feud."
"Will they be long in driving us to Saxilton?"
"Nay, for the road is good and the cattle good. What a baby 'tis to tremble so, just when we are free."
A few steps forward she made, then stopped and seemed like to fall. "I dare not pass the vault," she whispered.
He put his arm about her roughly and forced her lagging feet down the path. "The vault cannot kill," he growled, "but there are those waiting across the moor who carry more than women's fancies in their hands. Will thy fears be less, thou fool, if I am set on by a half score of the Waynes and killed before thy eyes?"
Weak as a bog-reed to catch the infection of each new wind, she bent to his own fear, and hurried on, and all but forgot the vault that stared at her from the corner of the path where the broken yew-trees shivered in the wind.