“If I meet her I will send her home.”
And in another minute I did meet her. For she was coming out of Daniel Ferrar’s yard. I supposed he was at home again.
“No,” she said, looking more wild, worn, haggard than before; “that’s what I have been to ask. I am just out of my senses, sir. He has gone for certain. Gone!”
I did not think it. He would not be likely to go away without clothes.
“Well, I know he is, Master Johnny; something tells me. I’ve been all about everywhere. There’s a great dread upon me, sir; I never felt anything like it.”
“Wait until night, Maria; I dare say he will go home then. Your mother is looking out for you; I said if I met you I’d send you in.”
Mechanically she turned towards the cottage, and I went on. Presently, as I was sitting on a gate watching the sunset, Harriet Roe passed towards the withy walk, and gave me a nod in her free but good-natured way.
“Are you going there to look out for the ghosts this evening?” I asked: and I wished not long afterwards I had not said it. “It will soon be dark.”
“So it will,” she said, turning to the red sky in the west. “But I have no time to give to the ghosts to-night.”
“Have you seen Ferrar to-day?” I cried, an idea occurring to me.