'Boot-hole?'
'Yes.'
'Cellar?' growing wild in his suggestions. 'Once I knew a hard-pressed fox run right into a cellar.'
'Even there.'
Talbot is at the end of his ingenuity. But at least there is one thing gained—she has spoken to him as to a fellow-sufferer.
This is no great advance perhaps, since were a new Deluge to cover the earth, which of us would not cling round the neck of a parricide if he were on a higher ledge of rock than we?
'If he is once away in the open,' says Margaret desperately, 'he is sure to get into a trap or be worried by a dog; he has no experience of life. Oh, poor little man!'
Her eyes brim up, and her voice breaks.
Prue has fallen, limp and whimpering, upon the other stone ball. Talbot stands between the mourners.
'Come,' says he stoutly, 'let us be doing something. Let us rout out every possible hole and corner once again; and if he does not turn up, I will go and tell the game-keepers and the farm-labourers to be on the look-out for him.'