Henry Burns opened the door and answered. She seemed afraid, until he had told her who he was, begging him to go away from the place and not harm a poor, lone woman. But she recognized him, when he had spoken again, and had lighted another lamp and held it for her to look at him.
She sat in an arm-chair, in which she had been evidently sleeping, propped up with pillows; and looked ill and feeble.
"I'm cold," she said, and shivered.
Henry Burns dragged her chair out into the office, by the fire, while she clung to the arms of it, as though in terror of tumbling out on to the floor. And, in that brief journey from room to room, it flashed over Henry Burns that the time and opportunity had come for him to know the secret she possessed.
"Dan won't like to find you here," she muttered. "He ought to be here—leaving me all alone. My, how it blows! How'd you get here, anyway? Don't mind what Dan says; you'll have to stay."
"He'll not be here to-night, with this storm keeping up," answered Henry Burns, "Where is he?"
"He went to town with Bess," said she. "Why don't she come? I'm lonesome without her. I'm hungry, too. She ought to make me a cup of tea."
"I'll make it," said Henry Burns; "and I'll get something for myself, too. I'll pay for it, so Witham won't lose by it."
He made his way to the kitchen and the pantry; lighted a fire in the kitchen stove, and made tea for himself and Granny Thornton; and toasted some bread for her. Then he foraged for himself and ate a hearty meal, for he was ravenously hungry. And, all the while, he was thinking what he should do and say to the old woman, nodding in the chair out in the office.
He returned there, and put more wood on the fire, so that it blazed up brightly, and the sparks shot up the flue with a roar. The roar was more than answered by the wind outside. It rattled the glass in the windows, and dashed the snow against them as though it would break them in. It found a hundred cracks and crevices about the old inn, to moan and shriek through, and blew a thin film of snow under the door.