“You have been riding through the forest, sir?” she asked. “It is a fine day for riding.”
“Yes—I wished to enquire for a man at the North-End Farm.”
He rode and she walked in silence, then she spoke in a dry, thin, and strained voice. “I was walking to Heron’s cottage to see Joan. But she was not there.—She’s not much like others. When she gets her work done, she’s off to herself somewhere—maybe to the wood, maybe elsewhere. It’s often so that you can’t find her.”
Now Carthew had found, too, that you couldn’t always find her. Suddenly his brow grew black again; he had not put that two and two together. “Alison,” he said and paused.
Alison, with an air of not looking at him at all, was watching closely. “Yes, Master Carthew?”
He rode a little farther in silence, then he said determinedly: “Master Aderhold who lives at the Oak Grange—” He paused.
“Yes, sir?” said Alison.
“He is a strange man,” said Carthew. “I remember when he came to Hawthorn, when I rode with him from the town, I thought him of a strange and doubtful mind.—We have not caught him tripping yet, but Master Clement holds that he thinks perversely, not according to sound doctrine.”
“People say that he makes gold and hoards it,” said Alison, “and that he hath a familiar.” She was not interested in Master Aderhold, but she would keep up whatever ball Master Harry Carthew tossed.