A pause, and then he said, with a jerk:
"Take that coat off."
Amaryllis obeyed, and lay still.
Beside the rutted cart-track, a few yards from where they lay, was a pile of brushwood, cut and stacked for fuel. From this, with a cautious eye and ear on the bend where the track twisted out of sight in the direction of the high road, he took an armful of sticks and twigs and buttoned round it the Norfolk jacket. He tore grass in great handfuls and stuffed the ends of the sleeves, Amaryllis helping eagerly as she seized his purpose.
He next took the Dutchwoman's knife from the dummy's pocket and dragged the rude torso to the side of the woodstack furthest from the expected approach, pushing it out across the track, so that, buttons downward, with left arm extended beyond the head which was not there, the right doubled beneath the breast, and the thrice-perforated cap, with a bunch of grass beneath it, dropped within the bend of the supposed left elbow, and the non-existence of legs concealed by the wood-pile, it might well be mistaken, by one coming down the wheel-track from the road, for a man stricken or sleeping.
Behind them was a small, deep hollow, where the ancient stump of some great tree had rotted.
"Get down there," said Dick. "Don't stand, roll in and curl up."
And the last she saw of him as she obeyed, was the back of the black head and the blue shirt, rising erect some ten yards up the track from the wood-pile, making themselves small behind the largest tree-trunk in sight, and the gently swaying right hand poising in its palm Dutch Fridji's knife.
Then she obeyed orders, curled up in her musty lair, and prayed.
Heavily nearer came the footsteps—walking—walking—walking—until the girl feared she must cry out or faint. She bit through a lump of the handkerchief he had tied round her neck for a stomacher—and then kissed it.