“Not even a pretty girl?”
The man grinned more widely.
“Noa, not nobody,” he said.
And he went on down the road, but twice looked back, turning sheep and all, to see what the stranger would be at.
Bishop stood for a few moments pondering the question, and then he followed the man.
“If she is not up the road,” he argued, “it is ten to one that she started up the hill to throw us off the scent. And she’s slipped down herself towards Calgarth. It’s that way, too, she went to meet him at night.”
And gradually quickening his steps as the case seemed clearer and his hopes grew stronger he was soon out of sight.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE GOLDEN SHIP
Two minutes after Bishop had passed from sight, Henrietta rose from a dip in the fern; in which she had lain all the time, as snugly hidden, though within eyeshot of him, as a hare in its form. She cast a wary glance round. Then she hastened to the gate, but did not pass through it. She knew too much. She chose a weak place in the fence, scaled it with care, and sprang lightly into the road. She glanced up and down, but no one was in sight, and pleased with her cleverness, she set off at a quick pace up the hill.
The sun lacked an hour of setting. She might count on two hours of daylight, and her spirits rose. As the emerald green of the lower hills shone the brighter for the patches of snow, harbingers of winter, which flecked them, so her spirits rose the higher for troubles overpast or to come. She felt no fear, no despondency, none of the tremours with which she had entered on her night adventure. A gaiety of which she did not ask herself the cause, a heart as light as her feet and as blithe as the black-bird’s note, carried her on. She who had awakened that morning in a prison could have sung and caroled as she walked. The beauty of the hills about her, of the lake below her, blue here, there black, filled her with happiness.