“That was lasst year. I’m not afraid of ’ee, now, Steve.”
“Tha doan’t knaw me, lass.”
“Aye, I knaw thee. I knaw tha’s sick and starved for want of me. Tha canna live wi’out thy awn lass to take care of ’ee.”
She rose.
“I maun gaw now. But I’ll be oop to-morrow and the next day.”
And to-morrow and the next day and the next, at dusk, the hour that Steven most dreaded, Dorsy came. She sat with him till long after the night had fallen.
Steven would have felt safe so long as she was with him, but for his fear that Mr. Greathead would appear to him while she was there and that she would see him. If Dorsy knew he was being haunted she might guess why. Or Mr. Greathead might take some horrible blood-dripping and dismembered shape that would show her how he had been murdered. It would be like him, dead, to come between them as he had come when he was living.
They were sitting at the round table by the fireside. The lamp was lit and Dorsy was bending over her sewing. Suddenly she looked up, her head on one side, listening. Far away inside the house, on the flagged passage from the front door, he could hear the “shoob-shoob” of the footsteps. He could almost believe that Dorsy shivered. And somehow, for some reason, this time he was not afraid.
“Steven,” she said, “didsta ’ear anything?”
“Naw. Nobbut t’ wind oonder t’ roogs.”