“There’s quite enough happening for me, if it’s all the same to you,” he said comfortably. “There’s a big elm down in Fanning’s meadow and there’ll be more before morning if this goes on. All I could do to stand up against the wind at the Four Corners and it fair blew me home. Oye, shut the door, can’t you?” He made a grab at the newspaper as, in the path of the wind, it leaped from the table and scudded across the room into a corner. It was followed by a half-empty packet of tobacco which he was too late to save.
“Here, will you shut that door!” he shouted, his head half under the table. Then, emerging and catching sight of the visitor: “Beg your pardon, Mr. Leslie; I didn’t see as it was you. What with that outer door opening straight onto this room like, the wind comes in something cruel.”
But Mrs. Gunnet’s sharp eyes had already detected something unusual in the caller’s bearing.
“There’s nothing wrong, is there, sir?” she broke in. “Was you coming after George?”
The newcomer nodded. He was panting with the haste in which he had come and his face had a queer, grey look underneath the natural tan of an open-air man. When he spoke it was in a hard, dry voice, carefully devoid of all emotion, as if he were afraid that, at any moment, it might get beyond his control.
“I say, Gunnet, I want you up at the farm. Something’s happened.”
He stopped, apparently not wishing to go further before Mrs. Gunnet, who was gazing at him, her round eyes wide with curiosity.
Gunnet got slowly to his feet.
“Anything wrong, Mr. Leslie?” he asked. “It’s a wild night, for certain, but if I’m really needed . . .”
Leslie gave a high-pitched laugh that ended in a crow. It was evident that he was keeping himself in hand with difficulty.