“Is that you, Dr Brandreth?”
She could not at first have been heard. There was no visible abatement of the driver’s speed. Again, and yet again, Mary repeated her cry, but apparently with no effect. On flew the wheels, down poured the rain. Mary was obliged, to save herself the risk of being knocked down as it passed her, to draw back a little.
“It surely must be Sir Ingram, after all,” she said to herself, but with no terror this time, with rather a wild, incomprehensible desire to laugh. But as the vehicle actually drew near her, as the lamps flashed into her face, common sense and self-possession returned.
“Oh, stop—stop!” she cried, “for mercy’s sake, whoever you are, stop!”
This last appeal, though she knew it not, was unneeded. Already the pace had been slackening, but it was not so easy, as might appear, suddenly to pull up a powerful, fast-trotting horse instinctively sharing its master’s desire to get home and out of the storm of rain as fast as possible. But two or three yards beyond the spot where Mary stood it was achieved. There were two men on the dog-cart, one driving, the other sitting behind. Almost before the horse stopped, the latter jumped down and was at its head.
“What can it be?” said the driver, as the man ran past him. “Yes, stay you by Madge, Andrew, or we shall have her getting excited. I’ll get down.”
Andrew, to tell the truth, was by no means averse to do as he was told. Madge’s kicks and plunges impressed him infinitely less than a hand-to-hand or face-to-face encounter with a ghost, or, failing a ghost, a lunatic escaped from the county asylum, which was the next idea presented to his bucolic brain. And, to do him justice, Mary might reasonably enough have been mistaken for the latter, if not for the former, as she stood in the pouring rain, umbrellaless, hatless even, at first sight; for, habitually careful, she had, when the rain first came on, half unconsciously drawn over her head the hood of the large waterproof cloak with which, most fortunately, she had enveloped herself for her run to the Edge. And from under this curious head-dress gleamed out her white face and brown eyes, unnaturally bright with anxiety and excitement, looking almost black in the flashing light of the lamps—different, how different, from the sunny hazel eyes that had looked up in Mr Cheviott’s face, half shyly, but all frankly, that Sunday morning in the old church porch!
They looked up now with a wild yet most piteous beseeching in their gaze. There was no need for Madge’s master to get down from his seat to question this strange suppliant. Before he could move she had run up to the side of the wheel, and before he could speak she had, so far, told her story:
“I have lost my way,” she said, “and, oh! I shall be so grateful if you can help me. Can you tell me if I am anywhere near Farmer Bartlemoor’s? You must forgive my stopping you. I did not know what to do.”
And for all answer, the man she was addressing sprang down at one bound to her side, exclaiming: