Two hundred yards further on, and she reaches the place where the footpath debouches upon the road. There is a stile of the usual rough crossbar pattern, proclaiming a right of way.
She stops only to see there is no one sitting upon it—for there might have been—then leaping lightly over, she proceeds along the path.
The shadow behind does the same, as though it were a spectre pursuing.
And now, in the deeper darkness of the narrow way, arcaded over by a thick canopy of leaves, he goes closer and closer, almost to touching. Were a light at this moment let upon his face, it would reveal features set in an expression worthy of hell itself; and cast farther down, would show a hand closed upon the haft of a long-bladed knife—nervously clutching—every now and then half drawing it from its sheath, as if to plunge its blade into the back of her who is now scarce six steps ahead!
And with this dread danger threatening—so close—Mary Morgan proceeds along the forest path, unsuspectingly: joyfully, as she thinks of who is before, with no thought of that behind—no one to cry out, or even whisper, the word: “Beware!”
Volume One—Chapter Twenty.
Under the Elm.
In more ways than one has Jack Wingate thrown dust in his mother’s eyes. His going to the Ferry after a piece of whipcord and a bit of pitch was fib the first; the second his not going there at all—for he has not. Instead, in the very opposite direction; soon as reaching the road, having turned his face towards Abergann, though his objective point is but the “big elm.” Once outside the gate he glides along the holly hedge crouchingly, and with head ducked, so that it may not be seen by the good dame, who has followed him to the door.