CHAPTER XXVIII
HOME
It was spring, and although spring that year had not done its worst, the two men who alighted from the train at Redhurst Station turned up the collars of their greatcoats and shivered. One of them, a powerful, squarely built man with a glass eye, gazed round the little country station as if in search of someone, and at last fixed his serviceable eye upon a richly dressed woman in a motor just outside the wicket-gate. He thereupon turned to his companion, a red-headed man who was arguing in broad Scotch with a porter over the alleged damage done to a very old and dilapidated cabin trunk.
"Tell them the luggage must be sent on at once, Jones," he said.
Leaving McPhulach, alias Jones, to see that his instructions were carried out, Calamity passed through the wicket-gate. As he approached her, the woman leaned out of the tonneau expectantly; but at that moment the sun emerged from an obscuring cloud and shone right into her eyes. By the time she had opened her sunshade and could see again Calamity had reached the car. The words of honeyed welcome died on her lips and she shrank back against the cushions as she saw him standing there with a grim smile on his face.
"Well, Betty?" he said.
"Is—is it you?" she faltered.
"Yes, you find me changed, eh?"
"A—a little," she answered.
The flicker of a smile crossed Calamity's face again as he looked at her.