Then she was gone, swift as an east-wind that had struck to the bone and stayed for no reprisal. The Master halted for a moment, gathering his strength.
“You’ll not go?” said Rebecca, her lean arm clutching him.
“Where she goes, I go, woman. Have you no wits to guide you?”
Rebecca, fear as she might for him, was glad to see him take the Logie way—straight to the open, though he went alone. It was only when he had stepped into the crimson flare of dawn, flooding the porch, that again she drew him back.
“Your two hands, and your head up to the stars, won’t carry far these days. You’d be the better for a gun in your hands, and a candle or two in your pockets. Caves are darksome places.”
He had wit left enough to get a fowling-piece and see to the priming, while she thrust candles and a tinder-box into his pocket.
Then Rebecca listened to his running stride across the cobble-stones to the wind that rose in shrill and bitter menace. There was only Jonah of the men-folk left. He knew it, and sprang to her shoulder.
“Aye, drive your claws in,” she snapped. “We’re all that’s left of Logie, you and me.”
Her glance wandered forlornly round the kitchen till it encountered the dead rat by the hearth. Then her unalterable strength in hardship found its token.
“There’s luck coming, Jonah,” she said, and got about her household tasks again.