She had become more eager at every question, and now she cried, "What has happened? What is going to happen? Do not keep it from me. I can bear it, for I have borne many things. Tell me why have you come?"
"To save your husband," said Jason. "Hush! Listen!"
And then he told her, with many gentle protests against her ghastly looks of fear, of the guards that were coming with the order for the execution of Michael Sunlocks. Hearing that, she waited for no more, but fell to a great outburst of weeping. And until her bout was spent he stood silent and helpless beside her, with a strong man's pains at sight of a woman's tears.
"How she loves him!" he thought, and again and again the word rang in the empty place of his heart.
But when she had recovered herself he smiled as well as he was able for the great drops that still rolled down his own haggard face, and protested once more that there was nothing to fear, for he himself had come to forestall the danger, and things were not yet so far past help but there was still a way to compass it.
"What way?" she asked.
"The way of escape," he answered.
"Impossible," she said. "There is a war ship outside, and every path to the shore is watched."
He laughed at that, and said that if every goat track were guarded, yet would he make his way to the sea. And as for the war ship outside, there was a boat within the harbor, the same that he had come by, a Shetland smack that had made pretence to put in for haddock, and would sail at any moment that he gave it warning.
She listened eagerly, and, though she saw but little likelihood of escape, she clutched at the chance of it.