"Father means to give him up. So I'm going down to warn him."
In Aunt Maria fear overcame romance. "Honey ... honey!" she stammered. "Doan yo' go down there! Doan yo' take no chances! If he's a bad man he'll hurt yo'!"
"A bad man!" cried Pen with shining eyes. "Aunt Maria where were your eyes!"
The old negress was awed by that light in her child's eyes. "Well ... well..." she murmured, "he sho was a pretty young man!"
Seizing a sweater to cover her bare arms and neck, Pen ran out of the room and down the stairs. Aunt Maria sat down muttering and shaking her head.
Softly closing the big door behind her, Pen sped over the weedy drive. The main gate to the grounds was in the side fence near the edge of the bank. Half of it hung askew on one hinge and the other half lay rotting on the earth. Outside the gate there was a grassy road which made a right-angled turn there. In one direction it ran back between the fields and on up the Neck; in the other it went straight ahead along the edge of the bank and presently descended to the old steamboat wharf on the property. So swift had Pen been that her father was still in sight, his lantern jogging agitatedly down the road in front of her. He always carried a lantern irrespective of the moon. She slackened her pace.
The road ran gently down a natural fault in the high bank. The earth was powdered with silver dust; a mocking-bird sang its casual and thrilling song nearby, and farther off whip-poor-wills. The bushes that rose between the road and the edge of the bank were festooned with the vines of the wild grape. It was the moment of its flowering and in this place its strange, poignant fragrance drowned the honeysuckle. In after life Pen never smelled that scent without living this night over. She was quite collected now. Terror, anxiety, shame and such feelings had been burned up by her great determination.
The road ended before the dilapidated wharf where no steamer had tied up for many years past. Pendleton's skiff was drawn up on the sand alongside, and the Pee Bee anchored a hundred feet out in the stream. Pen hung back in the shadows until her father should get away. Off to the left where the white beach curved beautifully out to the point she saw Counsell's little tent pitched in the sand with a fire burning before it, and the dark canoe drawn up. Off the end of the point the spidery lighthouse fixed her with the baleful glare of its red eye.
Pendleton pushed off to his motor-boat with an amount of caution absurd under the circumstances, for as soon as he turned over the engine she exploded like a gun. This time there was no hesitation in the Pee Bee; she moved off at once with her usual violence, shattering the night. Pen, watching the tent saw Counsell come out and look in the direction of the sound. But presently he went back again.
As soon as it was safe to do so, she picked her way out over the broken floor of the wharf. The piles were gnawed and broken, and the pushing of the ice during many seasons had given the whole structure a rakish cant towards the Bay. Pen dropped over the side into an inch or two of water and gingerly picked her way towards the tent.