“He went up to the young lady,” Ann answered.
“He did not, I tell you. For she is not up but out!”
“Perhaps he has followed her.”
“Perhaps you’re a liar!” Mrs. Gilson cried. And advancing on Ann with a threatening gesture, “If you don’t tell me where he is, I’ll shake you, woman! Do you hear?”
Ann hesitated; when who should appear at the foot of the stairs but Bishop himself, looking foolish.
“Where’s the young lady?” he asked. “Where’s your wits?” Mrs. Gilson retorted. “She’s out by the back-door this five minutes. If you want to catch her you’d best be quick!” And as with a face of consternation he hurried through the house, “She didn’t turn Ambleside way!” she called after him. “That’s all I know!”
This was something, but it left, as Bishop knew, two roads open. For, besides the field-path which led up the hill and through the wood, and so over the shoulder to Troutbeck, a farm lane turned short to the right behind the out-buildings, and ran into the lower road towards Calgarth and Bowness. Which had the girl taken? Bishop paused in doubt, and gazed either way. She was not to be seen on the slope leading up to the wood; but then, she was not to be seen on the other path. Still, he espied something there which gave him hope. On the hillside the snow had melted, but here and there on the north side of a wall, or in a sheltered spot, it lay; and a little way along the farm-road was such a patch extending across its width. Bishop hastened to the place, and a glance told him that the girl had not gone that way. With rising hopes he set off up the hill.
He was stout and short-winded, more at home in Cornhill than on real hills, and he did not expect to gain upon her. But he felt sure that he should find her track: and its direction where the fells were so sparsely peopled must tell him much. He remembered that it was at the upper end of the wood that he had surprised her on the occasion when her agitation had led him to question her. He resolved to make as quickly as possible for that point.
True enough, where the path entered the wood he came upon her footsteps imprinted in the snow; and he pushed on, through the covert to the upper end. Here, just within the wicket which opened on the road, lay some drifted snow; and as much to recover his breath, as because he thought it needful, he stopped to note the direction of her footprints. Alas, the snow bore no trace of feet! No one, it was clear, had passed through the gate that day.
This was a check, and he turned his back on the road, and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief which he took from his hat. He gazed, nonplussed, into the recesses of the wood through which he had passed. The undergrowth, which was of oak—with here and there a clump of hollies—still carried a screen of brown leaves, doomed to fall with the spring, but sufficient in the present to mask a fugitive. Moreover, in the damp bottom, where the bridge spanned the rivulet, a company might have lain hidden; and above him, where the wood climbed the shoulder, there were knolls and dells, and unprobed depths of yellow bracken, that defied the eye. Between him and this background the brown trunks stood at intervals, shot with the gold of the declining sun, or backed by a cold patch of snow: and the scene had been beautiful, in its russet livery of autumn blended with winter, if he had had eyes for it, or for aught but the lurking figure he hoped to detect.