"Where's—mother?"
"Her's gone—to—Teale!" The lie rang out fiercely, boldly. Then wrapping an old bedspread about Molly and keeping her close to him, he made his way down the stairs and out of the house. Molly did not turn to look into the lower room, she believed Martin, and she was numb with terror.
"Whar we-all going?" she panted, as Martin dragged her on. This question roused Morley. Up to that instant he had not considered where he was going; he only felt the necessity of flight.
"To—to Trouble Neck," he answered as if some one else were speaking through him.
"To her as—as they call the Cup-o'-Cold-Water Lady."
Molly did not speak again, but the answer had stilled somewhat her fear and anguish. By the time she and Martin reached the Trouble Neck cabin her uncanny shrewdness and cunning were well to the fore.
The little clock on the mantelshelf had just struck two when Marcia Lowe raised her tired eyes from the book spread out on the table before her.
The one large room of the cabin was kitchen, dining-room, parlour, library; all that was not included in bed-chamber. The lean-to was Marcia Lowe's sleeping apartment and a tiny room above reached only by a ladder from outside, served as a trim, cleanly resting-place for a chance guest or a needy traveller.
The little doctor lifted her aching eyes and took in the rude comfort of her home-place with a deep sigh.
"Oh!" she whispered—for she had adopted the compromise of the lonely woman and talked aloud to herself—"oh! if they could forget my sex!"