Faversham, Boden, and Harry Tatham left the inn together and were joined by Undershaw outside. They walked silently through the irregular village street where groups stood at the cottage doors to see them pass. As they emerged upon the high road the three others perceived that they were alone. Faversham had disappeared.
"Where is he?" said Tatham, standing amazed and looking back. They had gained the crest of a hill whence, beyond the roofs of Whitebeck in the hollow, a section of the main road could be dimly seen, running west a white streak piercing the wintry dusk. Along the white streak moved something black—the figure of a man. Boden pointed to it.
"Where's he going?" The question fell involuntarily from Undershaw.
Boden did not reply. But as Undershaw spoke there flashed out a distant light on the rising ground beyond the streak of road. Above it, huddled shapes of mountains, dying fast into the darkness. They all knew it for a light in Green Cottage; the same that Tatham had watched from the Duddon moorland on the evening of the murder. They turned and walked on silently toward the lower gate of Duddon.
"What's he going to do about the money?" said Undershaw abruptly.
Boden turned upon him, almost with rage.
"For heaven's sake, give him time!—it's positively indecent to rush a man who's gone through what that man's gone through!"
Faversham pursued his way toward the swelling upland which looks south over St. John's Vale, and north toward Skiddaw. He went, led by a passionate impulse, sternly restrained till this moment. Led also by the vision of her face as it had been lifted to him beside the grave of Melrose. Since then he had never seen her. But that Boden had written to her that morning, early, after the recovery of Brand's body, he knew.
The moon shone suddenly behind him, across the waste of Flitterdale, and the lower meadows of St. John's Vale. It struck upon the low white house amid its trees.
"Is Miss Penfold at home?"