"Oh my! here's another hailstorm coming," she said; and, drawing the hood of her cloak close over her face, she made all haste down the steep bit of irregular rock toward where she knew that, a little way off the path, a huge boulder would afford her shelter.
Down came the rain, and with it such a gust of wind that, stumbling up the bit of cliff on which the stone stood, Eve was almost bent double. Hullo! Somebody was here already, and, shaking back her hood to see who her companion in distress might be, she uttered a sharp scream of horror, for the man who stood before her was no other than Reuben May.
"Then you're not glad to see me, Eve?" he said, for the movement Eve had involuntarily made was to put out her hands as if to push him away.
Eve tried to speak, but the sudden fright of his unexpected presence seemed to have dried up her throat and tongue and taken away all power of utterance.
"Your old chum, Capen Triggs, asked me how I should like to take a bit of a trip with him, and I thought, as I hadn't much to keep me, I'd take his offer; and, as he's stopped at Plymouth for a day or so, I made up my mind to come so far as here and see for myself if some of what I've been told is true."
"Why, what have you been told?" said Eve, catching at anything which might spare her some of the unpleasantness of a first communication.
"Well, for one thing, that you're going to be married to your cousin."
Eve's color rose, and Reuben, thinking it might be anger, said, "Don't make any mistake, Eve: I haven't come to speak about myself. All that's past and over, and God only knows why I ever got such folly into my head;" and Reuben thought himself perfectly sincere in making this statement, for he had talked himself into the belief that this journey was undertaken from the sole desire to carry out his trust. "What I've come to do is to speak to you like a friend, and ask you to tell me what sort of people these are that you're among, and how the man gets his living that you're thinking of being married to."
Eve hesitated: then she said, "There is no need for me to answer you, Reuben, because I can see that somebody already has been talking about them to you—haven't they?"
"Yes, they have, but how do I know that what they've said is true?"