"I know," Priscilla had said. "Doctor Travers told me what would follow. I shall not be here for him to suffer for; I am going——"
"Where, my precious friend?"
"To—the Place Beyond the Winds! You do not understand. You cannot; no one can follow me; but I cannot bear the hurting blasts any more. I want the In-Place."
Then it was over, and now she was back in her lonely rooms. She packed her few, dear possessions, and toward morning lay down upon her bed. At daylight she departed, after settling her affairs with the night clerk and leaving no directions that any one could follow.
"It is business," she had cautioned, and the sleepy fellow nodded his head.
The rest did not matter. She would travel to the port from which the boats sailed to Kenmore. Any boat would do; any time. Some morning, perhaps, at four o'clock, if the passage had not been too rough, she would find herself on the shabby little wharf with the pink morning light about her, and the red-rock road stretching on before.
Then Priscilla, like a miser, gripped her purse. Never before had money held any power over her, but the hundreds she had saved were precious to her now. Her father's doors were still, undoubtedly, closed to her. She could not be a burden to the two men living in Master Farwell's small home. There was, to be sure, Mary McAdam! By and by, perhaps, when the hurt was less and she could trust herself more, she would go to the White Fish Lodge and beg for employment; but until then——
The morning Priscilla departed, Ledyard, unequal to any further strain, was called upon to bear several. By his plate, at the breakfast table, lay a scrawled envelope that he recognized at once as a report from Tough Pine.
"What's up now?" muttered he. "This thing isn't due for—three weeks yet."
Then he read, laboriously, the crooked lines: