“Ah. That is well.”
The reverend gentleman seemed to be strangely at a loss for words. He glanced at Betsy.
“Would you mind leaving me alone with Mr. Pickering for a little while?” he said.
The wounded man laughed, and there was a note in his voice that showed how greatly the tension had relaxed.
“If that’s what you’re after, Mr. Herbert,” he said promptly, “you may rest assured that the moment I’m able to stir we’ll be married. I told Mr. Beckett-Smythe so yesterday.”
“Indeed; I am glad to hear it. Nevertheless, I want to talk with you alone.”
The vicar’s insistence was a different thing to the wish expressed by a magistrate and a police superintendent. Betsy went out at once.
For an appreciable time after the door had closed no word was spoken by either of the men. The vicar’s eyes were fixed mournfully on the valley, through which a train was winding its way. The engine left in its track white wraiths of steam which vanished under the lusty rays of the sun. The drone of the showman’s organ playing “Tommy Atkins” reached the hardly conscious listeners as through a telephone. From a distant cornfield came the busy rattle of a reaping machine. The harvest had commenced a fortnight earlier than usual. Once again was the bounteous earth giving to man a hundredfold what he had sown. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” Out there in the field were garnered the wages of honest endeavor; here in the room, with its hospital perfume, were being awarded the wages of sin, for George Pickering was condemned to death, and it was the vicar’s most doleful mission to warn him of his doom.