I looked at my watch. It was five minutes past six.
"Well, we can't go now," said I. "It's settled. What a comfort!" I wonder if I had ever in my heart meant to go!
The next hour passed very quietly. We sat smoking pipes and cigars, and talking in subdued tones. The recollection of the dead man in the adjoining room sobered the excitement to which our position would otherwise have given occasion. Indeed, I suppose that I, at least, who had led the rest into this imbroglio through my whim, should have been utterly overwhelmed by the burden on me. But I was not. Perhaps Hogvardt's assumption of responsibility relieved me; perhaps I was too full of anger against Constantine to think of the risks we ourselves ran; and I was more than half persuaded that the revelation of what he had done would rob him of his power to hurt us. Moreover, if I might judge from the words I heard on the road, we had on our side an ally of uncertain, but probably considerable, power, in the sweet-voiced girl whom the old woman called the Lady Euphrosyne; and she would not support her uncle's murderer even though he were her cousin.
Presently Watkins carried me off to view his pen of goats, and, having passed through the lofty, flagged kitchen, I found myself in a sort of compound formed by the rocks. The ground had been levelled for a few yards, and the cliffs rose straight to the height of ten or twelve feet; from the top of this artificial bank they ran again, in wooded slopes, toward the peak of the mountain. I followed their course with my eye, and five hundred or more feet above us, just beneath the summit, I perceived a little wooden chalet or bungalow. Blue smoke issued from the chimneys, and, even while we looked, a figure came out of the door and stood still in front of it, apparently looking down toward the house.
"It's a woman," I pronounced.
"Yes, my lord. A peasant's wife, I suppose."
"I dare say," said I. But I soon doubted Watkins's opinion—in the first place, because the woman's dress did not look like that of a peasant woman; and, secondly, because she went into the house, appeared again, and levelled at us what was, if I mistook not, a large pair of binocular glasses. Now, such things were not likely to be in the possession of the peasants of Neopalia. Then she suddenly retreated, and through the silence of those still slopes we heard the door of the cottage closed with violence.
"She doesn't seem to like the look of us," said I.
"Possibly," suggested Watkins, with deference, "she did not expect to see your lordship here."
"I should think that's very likely, Watkins," said I.