“I managed to send a message in to her by old Sam Lucas, the shepherd, and she came out and met me behind the barn. She read your letter, sir, and turned a little red. She seemed to hesitate like, and then asked me if I knowed you. When I told her I did, she said I was to say she’d meet you at eight o’clock to-night at the place you mentioned.”
My heart leaped for joy.
I slipped the coin agreed upon into the old fellow’s horny palm, and with injunctions to secrecy left the place and hurried along the road, over the level crossing, into Caldecott, where I told my companions of my tryst.
During my absence they had taken up the flooring of one of the downstairs rooms, but the search had been in vain, and they were now working in their shirt-sleeves replacing the boards.
“We shall have another visit from them swabs to-night, doctor,” Seal said, as he mopped the perspiration from his sea-bronzed face. “There’ll be some fun in this house before morning, that’s my firm belief.”
By “fun,” the skipper meant fighting, for if he met Black Bennett we knew there would be blows—and hard ones too.
Punctually at eight o’clock I halted beneath the weather-worn sign-post. The crimson after-glow had faded and the still evening was far advanced. Away in the west the red glow still showed from behind the hills, but in the east crept up the dark night-clouds. The hour struck from the church towers of several villages, and away in the far distance the curfew commenced to toll solemnly, just as it has ever done since the far-back Norman days.
With eyes and ears on the alert, I stood awaiting her coming.
She was late—as a woman always is—but at last I saw the flutter of a light dress approaching in the twilight, and went eagerly forward to meet her.
In the fading light I saw her face. To me it looked more beautiful than before, because the cheeks were slightly flushed as I raised my hat to greet her.