The fragrance of that imaginary heather-bloom tucked away in the impassive chauffeur’s breast was occasionally apparent in a furtive glance thrown skyward, or in a momentary glisten of mist in the gray shell of the mechanical eye.
It had made the whole family of his employers very sympathetic towards Andrew, as to a friend. And now a whiff of that heather memory stood Pemrose in good stead.
“I reckon if leetle Margery were livin’, she’d feel in the verra same way gin anny misfortune happed to me,” he told himself.
“Aw, weel, lassie!” Thus he spoke aloud. “Since ye’re set on gaeing on a wee bit further, we’ll gang; but dinna get yer hopes stickit on finding onything!”
“Andrew–Andrew, himself, has found something! Look–look at him!”
It was barely twenty minutes later that the wildly startled cry burst from Una as the trio struggled on–on down the fitful path, between the rocky jaws of the Man Killer, where beetling crags loomed, fang-like, on either side of them and, here and there some swollen rill made of a green moss-bank a slimy mud-bed.
“He–he’s hearing things, if he isn’t seeing them. Oh, look!... Look at him!”
Una’s hand was at her jumping heart–pressing hard as if to hold it in her body–as she beheld the tall figure of the chauffeur, motionless as arrested mechanism, upon the trail, ahead.
“I heerd a–skirl.” Andrew’s face was stony as that of the Old Man of Greylock–a featured rock–as he turned it upon the breathless girls.
“A skirl! A cry!” he repeated hoarsely. “’Twas na the yap of an animal, either! Somebody–somebody’s yawping for help out here in this awfu’ spot! Dinna ye hear it, children?”