Jeckie suddenly got up from her chair, and turned towards the hearth. She stood looking into the fire for some time, and when, at last, she glanced at her visitor there was a look in her eyes which Revis never forgot.
"What did I give for them?" she said in a low, concentrated voice. "Man!—I don't know—yet!—what I gave for them!"
Revis stood staring at her for a moment of wonder. Her answer was beyond him. And as he had no reply to it he turned to go. But Jeckie stopped him.
"Wait a minute," she said. "A question—Lucilla Grice and her husband?"
"They've left the neighbourhood," replied Revis. "They sold their house and furniture and went away. I don't know where they've gone."
Jeckie said no more, and Revis went out, said a few words to Farnish, and drove off. And Farnish went indoors, and found Jeckie already setting about the preparations for their early dinner. He was astonished to find that she began to be talkative that day; still more astonished that, when evening came, she cooked a hot supper, encouraged him to eat, ate heartily herself, and before they went to bed mixed a goodly tumbler of grog for each of them. It was, thought Farnish, like old times, and he went to his chamber in high content.
But as the grey dawn broke a few hours later, Farnish woke to find Jeckie, fully dressed, standing at his bedside. He stared at her in astonishment.
"Get up; get dressed; come down; we're going away," said Jeckie. "Don't talk, but do as I tell you. There'll be some breakfast ready by the time you're down."
Farnish obeyed; he was still as clay in his elder daughter's hands. And an hour later, still obedient though wondering, he followed her out of the cottage, and up the empty street of Savilestowe, past what had once been Grice's, past what had once been the Golden Teapot, past the last house, past the last tree. At the top of the hill, and as the morning broke, he turned and looked back, having some strange intuition that he was being taken away from a place which he had known long and would never see again. He stood looking for some minutes; when he turned, Jeckie, who had never once looked back, was marching stolidly ahead.