Hugh nodded his head.
"Are you sure he has not got back?"
"Quite sure."
"In short, you think what I saw was merely the result of woman's hysteria?"
Hugh smiled through his white lips, and his staring eyes assumed a momentary look of amused composure. He stepped to the table and fumbled some papers.
This reminded Greta of the paper the parson had asked her to deliver. "I ought to have given you this before," she said. "Mr. Christian sent it."
He took it without much apparent interest, put it on the table unread, and went to the door with Greta.
The trap was standing in the court-yard, with Natt in the driver's seat, and Brother Peter in the seat behind. The snow had ceased to fall, but it lay several inches deep on the ground. There was the snow's dumb silence on the earth and in the air.
Hugh helped Greta to her place, and then lifted the lamp from the trap, and looked on the ground a few yards ahead of the horse. "There are no footprints in the snow," he said, with a poor pretence at a smile—"none, at least, that go from the house."
Greta herself had begun to doubt. She lacked presence of mind to ask if there were any footprints at all except Peter's. The thing was done and gone. It all happened three hours ago, and it was easy to suspect the evidence of the senses.