"Can you keep a secret?"
Promptly, emphatically, the answer came. "Yes, I can."
"Then listen! You must stay here, hide yourself, keep yourself as best you may, while I go to—make arrangements. I will be no longer than I can help, but it will take time. The house is well stocked; make yourself comfortable. There are days when no one knows whether I am here or elsewhere. Protect yourself until I return. And when"—Farwell paused and moistened his lips—"when you are over the border, in the whirlpool, the past, this life, must be forgotten. Raise up a high wall, Priscilla, that no one can scale. Begin your new life from the hour you reach the States. The one who will befriend you need know no more than I tell him; others must take you on faith. At any moment your father, or some one like Jerry-Jo, might hound you unless you live behind a shield. You understand?"
He did not plead for his own safety, and he was, at that moment, humanly thinking of hers alone.
"If you get the worst of it, come back; but leave the gate open only for—yourself."
"Yes, yes." And now Priscilla's eyes were shining like stars. "I will do all that you say; I feel so brave and strong and sure. I want the test, and I will leave the door to Kenmore ajar until the day when I can push it wide and enter as I will, taking or bringing my dear friends with me. I see"—she paused and her eyes grew misty—"I see My Road, stretching on and on, and it ends—oh, Master Farwell, it ends in my Heart's Desire!" She was childishly elated and excited.
Farwell was fascinated.
"Your Heart's Desire?" he muttered; "and what is that?"
"Who knows until—she sees it? Hurry! hurry! Master Farwell, I long to set forth."
Forgotten was her recent experience of horror; fading already was Kenmore from her sight. Danger by the way did not daunt her; the man bowed before her was but a blurred speck upon her vanishing horizon; then suddenly a sound caught her ear.