Christian hesitated.
“I do not know—why should you? you can get nothing but blight and disappointment from me, and yet—for once—you may come to me at night—not to-morrow night, but the next. I will wait for you at the little gate; and now go home and take rest—is it not enough that one should be constantly watching? Fare you well.”
Before Anne could answer, the tall, dark, gliding figure was away—moving along with noiseless footstep over the sands to the gate of Schole. She proceeded on herself, in wonder and agitation—how shallow was her concern for Norman in comparison with this; how slight her prospect of success when this earnest woman, whose words had such a tone of power in them, even in the deepness of her grief, declared that in her all hope was dead. It was a blow to all her expectations—nevertheless it did not strike her in that light. Her anticipation of the promised interview, her wonder at what had passed in this, obliterated the discouraging impression. She was too deeply interested in what she had seen and heard, to think of the stamp of hopelessness which these despairing words set on her own exertions. That night she transferred her lights early from her little sitting-room to the bed-chamber behind. That was a small matter, if it gave any satisfaction to the melancholy woman, the light from whose high chamber window she could see reflected on the gleaming water, after Miss Crankie’s little household had been long hours at rest.
The next day was a feverish day to Anne, and so was the succeeding one. She took long walks to fill up the tardy time, and made acquaintance with various little sunbrowned rustics, and cottage mothers; but gained from them not the veriest scrap of information about Norman, beyond what she already knew—that he had killed a man, and had been drowned in his flight from justice—that now the property, as they thought, was in the king’s hands, “and him having sae muckle,” as one honest woman suggested, “he didna ken weel what to do wi’t. Walth gars wit wavor—It’s a shame to fash him, honest man, wi’ mair land that he can make ony use o’—it would have been wiser like to have parted it among the puir folk.”
On the afternoon of the day on which she was to see Christian Lillie again, Anne lost herself in the unknown lanes of Aberford. After long wandering she came to the banks of a little inland water, whose quiet, wooded pathway was a great relief to her, after the dust and heat of the roads. She stayed for a few minutes to rest herself; upon one hand lay a wood stretching darkly down as she fancied to the sea. She was standing on its outskirts where the foliage thinned, yet still was abundant enough to shade and darken the narrow water; a little further on, the opposite bank swelled gently upward in fields, cultivated to the streamlet’s edge—but the side on which she herself stood, was richly wooded along all its course, and matted with a thick undergrowth of climbing plants and shrubs and windsown seedlings. The path wound at some little distance from the waterside through pleasant groups of trees. Anne paused, hesitating and undecided, not knowing which way to turn. A loud and cheerful whistle sounded behind her, and looking back, she saw a ruddy country lad, of some sixteen or seventeen years, trudging blythely along the pathway; she stopped him to ask the way.
“Ye just gang straight forenent ye,” said the lad, “even on, taking the brig at Balwithry, and hauding round by the linn in Mavisshaw. Ye canna weel gang wrang, unless ye take the road that rins along the howe of the brae to the Milton, and it’s fickle to ken which o’ them is the right yin, if ye’re no acquaint.”
“I am quite a stranger,” said Anne.
“I’m gaun to the Milton mysel,” said the youth. “I’ll let ye see the way that far, and then set ye on to the road.”
Anne thanked him, and walked on briskly with her blythe conductor, who stayed his whistling, and dropped a step or two behind, in honor of the lady. He was very loquacious and communicative.
“I’m gaun hame to see my mother. My father was a hind on the Milton farm, and my mother is aye loot keep the house, now that she’s a widow-woman. I’ve been biding wi’ my uncle at Dunbar. He’s a shoemaker, and he wanted to bind me to his trade.”