Dolores and Simon eagerly bent over the bag. With her bony fingers the old woman first lifted a heap of rags kept there for Dick's benefit; she then removed a few shiny red and yellow pebbles. Beneath these lay quite a little hoard of gold coins, of which she seized a generous handful, making them clink in the hollow of her hand. They were old coins of all sizes and bearing all sorts of heads.
Simon exclaimed excitedly:
"She comes from there! . . . She has been there!"
And shaking the mad woman by the shoulders, he asked:
"Where is it? How many hours have you been walking? Have you seen a party of men leading two prisoners, an old man and a girl?"
But the madwoman picked up her dog and closed her bag. She refused to hear. At the most, as she moved away, she said, or rather sang to the air of a ballad which the dog accompanied with his barking:
"Men on horseback. . . . They were galloping. . . . It was yesterday. . . . A girl with fair hair. . . ."
Simon shrugged his shoulders:
"She's wandering. Rolleston has no horses. . . ."
"True," said Dolores, "but, all the same, Miss Bakefield's hair is fair."