Madeline gazed for a moment after the flying figure, and wonderingly opened the message. This is what she read:
Be at H——'s to-night when evening train comes down. We are ready for action; have found a witness.
C. V.
Madeline lifted her eyes from the scrap of paper and looked about her incredulously, as if she expected to find some explanation shining in the air.
"Ready for action," she murmured. "That means—can it mean that Lucian Davlin is at last in our power? Can those detectives have solved the mystery? Oh! how can I wait until night!"
She fairly flew along now, eager to keep in motion. On, on she went, over the stile, through the glittering white-robed grove; on, until she reached Hagar's cottage. It was locked and deserted, as she knew, but she cared not for that. She must walk somewhere, then why not here?
For a moment she stood on the snow-laden door stone, and gazed about her. Then swiftly, as swiftly as before, she flew down the path—the same path she had taken on the Summer day when she had heard from Hagar's lips her mother's story. When she reached the tree in whose arms she had nestled so often, where she had listened to the bargain between her step-father and decrepit old Amos Adams, and where she had been wooed by Lucian Davlin—she paused. There, coming toward her, was Lucian Davlin himself.
"What a fatality!" muttered the girl. "He is coming to meet me; has been watching me, perhaps."
She stood calmly gazing up at the snow-laden branches, and again she saw herself standing underneath them, a hesitating girl, wondering if she could let her lover go away alone. Then she turned her head and her eyes met those of Lucian Davlin.