"I have no fear of that," said Pen.
He slipped his hand in his side pocket. "Here," he said, "take this." He produced an automatic pistol. "Do you know how to use it?"
She shook her head. He explained the mechanism.
"Thanks," she said putting it inside her dress, and walked on.
He strutted after her as far as the gates, and stood there watching. She turned into the path behind the cottage, and followed it into the woods. Her idea in making the little temple her starting-point was that Don in need of succor, might haunt the paths they had followed together.
The sun was looking straight into the little glade through the side that opened above the pond, filling the place with a rich yellow light. Between the shadows of the pillars a broad beam lay athwart the inscription of the gravestone, picking out the curly flourishes of the letters that had been sculped with such loving care. Pen was indifferent now to her shadowy brother who lay under the stone. She had not remembered him in many days. Her thoughts were filled by a man of flesh and blood.
"Don! Don!" she spoke softly, not expecting any answer there, and not getting any.
She let herself down the bank to the spring around at the left which welled between the roots of a superb white oak that the axe had spared. For a tree which guards a spring is sacred even to a timber scout. Pen had hopes of the spring because it was one of the only two places that Don knew of where fresh water was to be obtained. She searched carefully about it but was not rewarded by finding any tracks. She made a wider circuit of the spot but could not see that the underbrush had been disturbed.
She forced her way slowly through the tangle of thorny creepers and thickly-springing sassafras around the pond to the old wood road. It curved away secretly into the gloom; old, undisturbed, overgrown; Nature had painted in this ancient blemish. Years ago the bed of the road had been packed so hard that even yet nothing would take root there except a mossy growth like fur underfoot. But at either side bushes had taken advantage of the free light to spring up thickly. Now for the most part they met overhead, though there were places where the sun splashed through.
Pen walked slowly, pausing often to softly call Don's name. Nothing answered her but bird sounds, and the soft chattering of leaves in the high sunlight. No breath stirred down below. She made wide detours through secondary roads, mere cuts through the woods that only a practised eye could follow now.