“That is an idea, sir. I want to pack a valise, and get all the money I have in the house. I will ride my black horse down here and stable him for the night.”
“Lad, you don’t contemplate dying! That’s the spirit.”
“If I have to go, sir, I’ll not leave Severn alive behind me. Judith shall be free.”
It was a cloudless June morning when Hilary Blake and Colonel Maundrell got on their horses and took the lane that led round the back of the village past the mill.
Blake’s Canadian campaigning had hardened him, and he had slept for three hours. He carried a leather valise strapped to his saddle. The colonel had the sabres wrapped in a black cloth under his arm. Mists still hung about the valleys, and they could not see the sea.
They passed Gaymer’s farm and came to the fir plantation. It was black, and still, and secret, and gloom hung within the crowded trunks like a curtain. A rough gate opened through a ragged hedge. They dismounted, and leading their horses, disappeared into the wood.
Judith Strange had not slept, for a man had come riding late up the drive between the old oaks, and had left a letter with the major domo, and galloped away again as though fearful of being called back. The letter had been sealed with red wax, and Judith had broken the seal and read the letter by candle-light in the long parlour.
“Judith,—I love you. I fight Severn to-morrow morning, and you shall be free. Do not try to come between us, for you will fail.
“Hilary Blake.”
She had turned the letter over in her hands, and her gaze had rested on the red wax of the seal she had broken. The colour of blood! She had been seized by a foreboding of evil, by the thought that this thing was prophetic, that to-morrow the man who loved her might be dead.