"But you had something—something that you saw or heard—to tell you?"
She shook her head. And he saw, wondering at her, that she was very deeply in earnest as she admitted:
"No. Nothing! But I know. I tell you, I know. Can't you feel that there is some one back there, following us, spying on us, hiding and yet dogging every step we take? Can't you feel it?"
She saw him shaken with silent laughter. She understood that he, a man, was convulsed with laughter at the imaginings of her, a maid. And yet, also, since she was quick-minded, she noted how his laughter was silent! He meant her to see that he put no credence in her suspicions; and yet, for all that, he was impressed, and he did take care that no one, who might follow them, should overhear him!
"One doesn't feel things like that," he told her, as though positive. But in the telling he kept his voice low, so that it was scarcely louder than her own whisper.
"One does," she retorted. "And you know it, Babe Deveril!"
"But," he challenged her, "were you right, and were there a man or several men back there tracking us, why all this caution on their parts? What would they be waiting for, being armed themselves and knowing us unarmed? What better place than this to take us in? Why give us a minute's chance to slip away in the brush?"
"I don't know." She shrugged, and again he marvelled at her; she looked like one who had little vital concern in what any others, pursuing, might or might not do.
Despite his cool determination to adhere to calm reason and to discount feminine impressionism, which he held to be fostered by a nervous condition brought about by overexertion, Babe Deveril began to feel, as she felt, that there was something more than imagination in her contention. How does a man sense things which no one of his five senses can explain to him? He could not see any reason in this abrupt change in both their moods; and yet, none the less, it seemed to him, all of a sudden, as though eyes were spying on him from behind every pine trunk, and from the screen of every thicket.