“Tell me this minute!”
“To Tyson the doctor’s, if you must know,” Bess replied grudgingly.
“Oh!”
She knew now. She stood half way down the smooth side of the hollow in which Tyson’s farm nestled. She remembered the large kitchen, with the shining oaken table and the woman with the pale plump face who had crouched on the settle and gone in fear of nights. And though the place still stood a trifle uncanny in her memory, and the uncomfortable impression which the woman’s complaints had made on her, had not quite passed from her, the knowledge relieved her.
She knew at least where she was, and that the place lay barely a furlong from the road. She might count, too, on the aid of the doctor’s wife, who was jealous of this very girl. And after all, in comparison with the miser’s wretched abode, Tyson’s house, though lonely, seemed an everyday dwelling, and safe.
The news reassured her. When Bess, in a tone of scorn that thinly masked disappointment, flung at her the words, “Then you are not coming?” she was ready.
“Yes, I am coming,” she said. And she yielded herself again to Bess’s guidance. In less than a minute they were at the bottom of the hollow. They skirted the fold-yard and the long, silent buildings that bulked somewhat blacker than the night. They turned a corner, and a dog not far from them stirred its chain and growled. But Bess stilled it by a word, and the two halted in the gloom, where a thin line of light escaped beneath a door,
CHAPTER XXX
BESS’S TRIUMPH
Bess knocked twice, and, stooping to the keyhole, repeated the owl’s hoot. Presently a bar was drawn back, and after a brief interval, which those within appeared to devote to listening, the key was turned, and the door was opened far enough to admit one person at a time. The two slid in, Bess pushing Henrietta before her.
The moment she had passed the threshold Henrietta stood, dazzled by the light and bewildered by what she saw. Nor was it her eyes only that were unpleasantly affected. A voice, loud and blustering, hailed her appearance with a curse, fired from the heart of a cloud of tobacco smoke. And the air was heavy with the reek of spirits.