“I am not sure of that,” she replied abruptly. “There is an old ferry half a mile up the stream, and I am told that this road leads to it. Ten years ago the present ferry crossed there, but it was moved to a point lower down to shorten the road. Now do you see?”
“What?” I asked.
“That we might cross the river there. The boat is on this side, I believe. Whereas if we go to the new ferry and can make no one hear, we shall be detained until morning.”
I was considerably taken aback both by her knowledge of the district and by a proposal so unlooked for. Moreover, I had never heard of a second ferry, though there might be one. “I think if we are wise we shall keep to the high road,” I said prudently, “and go to the proper ferry. At any rate we ought to go as far as the hamlet. We can learn there if the ferry be working, and if it is not we may be able to secure a boat. We don’t know the old crossing—”
“Are you afraid?” she asked.
The taunt did not affect me. “No,” I said, “but a ferry at night, if it is seldom worked, and the man is old too,—well, it is not the safest of ventures.”
“A ferry in good moonlight!” she cried in scorn. “Are you afraid, sir? When the risk is mine and if I do not reach the High Hills in time it will not be you who will pay the penalty?”
I could not meet that argument, nor the passion in her voice. Yet I remember that I hesitated. The place was forbidding. We were halfway down the slope that led to the river, and below us stretched the marshes that fringed the stream, marshes always dreary and deceitful, and at night veiled in poisonous mists. At the foot of the sign-post, which rose pale and stark against a background of pines, there was something which had the look of a newly-dug grave; while halfway up the mast a wisp of stuff, the relic, perhaps, of a flag which had been nailed up and torn down, fluttered dismally in the wind. I looked along the main road but no one was stirring. The lights of the hamlet were not in sight.
I suspected that, quietly as she sat her horse, she was in suspense until I answered, and I gave way. “Very well,” I said reluctantly. “But you must not blame me if we go wrong. God knows I only want to do the best for you?”
I do not know why my words displeased her, but they seemed to prick her in some tender spot.