It was two weeks later that the councilmen stood facing Walden across the great museum table. They had come together, Abbot and Drew and the others, and they faced him together, frowning. Their thoughts were hidden. Walden could catch only glimpses of what lay beneath their worry.
"Every day." Abbot's eyes were hard, unyielding. "Why, Walden? Why does he go there every day?"
"Does it matter?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. We can't tell—yet."
The ring of faces, of buried perceptions, of fear, anxiety, and a worry that could no longer be shrugged off. And Eric away, as he was every day now, somewhere in the distant hills.
"The boy's all right." Walden checked his own rush of worry.
"Is he?"
The worry in the open now, the fear uncontained, and no more vacillation. Their thoughts hidden from Walden, their plans hidden, and nothing he could do, no way to warn Eric, yet.
Abbot smiled, humorlessly. "The boy had better be all right...."