"Not find them?" Sophia answered, staring at him. "Are they not there?"
"No, my lady," he returned, glancing nervously over his shoulder and back again. "At least I--I can't find them, ma'am. It is very dark. You don't think," he continued--and for the first time she discerned by the poor light of the candle that he was trembling, "that--that they can have fallen into the river?"
His tone alarmed her, even while she thought his fears preposterous. "Fallen into the river?" she exclaimed contemptuously. "Nonsense, sir! Are you trying to frighten us?" And without waiting for an answer, she raised her voice and called "George! George!"
No answer. She stepped quickly from the carriage. "Take me," she said imperiously, "to where you left them."
Lady Betty protested; Pettitt clutched at her habit, begged her to stay. But Sophia persisted, and groped her way after Lane until he came to a stand, his hand on the bark of the fallen blackthorn, beside which she had last seen the men. "They were here," he said, in the tone of one half dazed. "They were. They were just here."
"Yes, I remember," she answered. And undeterred by Pettitt's frantic appeals to her to return, she called the man again and again; still she got no answer.
At length, fear of she knew not what came on her, and shaken by the silence of the valley through which her voice rang mournfully, she hurried back to the carriage, and sprang into it in a panic; the man Lane following close at her elbow. It was only when she had taken her seat, and found him clutching the door of the carriage and pressing as near as he could come, that she saw he was ashake with fear; that his eyes were staring, his hair almost on end.
"They've fallen into the river," he cried wildly, his teeth chattering. "I never thought of that! They have fallen in, and are drowned!"
"Don't be a fool, man!" Sophia answered sharply. She was striving to keep fear at bay, while Lady Betty awestricken, clung to her arm. "We should have heard a cry or something."
"They were drunk," he whispered. "They were drunk! And now they are dead! They are dead! Dead!"