Her old look of weariness was creeping back.

"Come, Mercy, tell the truth, you sly little thing--eh?"

She was fumbling his withered roses with nervous fingers. Her throat felt parched.

He looked down at her saddening face, and then muttered, as if speaking to himself: "I told that Bonnithorne this hole and corner was no place for the girl. He should have taken her to London."

The girl's heart grew sick. The book was closed and dropped back on to the table.

"And now, Mercy," said Hugh Ritson, "I want you to be a good little woman, and do as I bid you, and not speak a word. Will you?"

The child-face brightened, and Mercy nodded her head, a little tear rolling out of one gleaming eye. At the same moment she put her hand in the pocket of her muslin ap.r.o.n, and took out a pair of knitted mittens, and tried to draw them on to Hugh's wrists.

He looked at the gift, and smiled, and said: "I won't need these--not to-day, I mean. See, I wear long gloves, with fur wristbands--there, I'll store your mittens away in my pocket. What a sad little soul--crying again?"

Mercy's pretty dreams were dying one by one. She lifted now a timid hand until it rested lightly on his breast.

"Listen. I'm going out, but I'll soon be back. I must talk with Mrs.

Drayton, and I've something to pay her, you know."

The timid hand fell to the girl's side.

"When I return there may be some friends with me--a lady and a gentleman--but I want to see them alone, quite alone, and I don't want them to see you--do you understand?"

A great dumb sadness was closing in on Mercy's heart.

"But they will soon be gone, and then to-morrow you and I must talk again, and try to arrange matters so that you won't be quite so lonely, but will stir about, and see the doctor for your eyes, and get well again, and try to forget--"

"Forget!" said the girl, faintly. Her parched throat took away her voice.

"I mean--that is to say--I was hoping--of course, I mean forget all the trouble in c.u.mberland. And now get away to bed like a good little girl.

I must be off. Ah, how late!--see, a quarter to eleven, and my watch is slow."

He walked into the bar, b.u.t.toning up his coat to his ears. The girl followed him listlessly. Mrs. Drayton was washing gla.s.ses behind the counter.

"Mind you send this little friend of mine to bed very soon," said Hugh to the landlady. "Look how red her eyes are! And keep a good fire in this cozy parlor on the left--you are to have visitors--you need not trouble about a bedroom--they won't stay long. Let me see, what do they say is the time of your last up-train?"

"To London? The last one starts away at half past twelve," said the landlady.

"Very good. I'll see you again, Mrs. Drayton. Good-night, Mercy, and do keep a brighter face. There--kiss me. Now, good-night--what a silly, affectionate little goose--and mind you are in bed and asleep before I return, or I shall be that angry--yes, I shall. You never saw me angry.

Well, never mind. Good-night."

The door opened and closed. Mercy went back into the room. It was cheerless and empty, and the children's happy voices lived in it no more. The girl's heart ached with a dull pain that had never a pang at all, but was dumb and dead and cold; and Mercy was all alone.

"Perhaps he was only in fun when he said that about walking out with somebody and trying to forget, and not being seen," she thought. "Yes; he must have been only in fun," she thought, "because he knew how I waited and waited."

Then she took up again the book that he had hardly glanced at. It fell open at a yellow, dried-up rose that had left the stain of its heart's juice on the white leaf.

"Yes, he was only in fun," she said, and then laughed a little; and then a big drop fell on to the open page and on to the dead flower.

Then she tried to be very brave.

"I must not cry; it makes my eyes, oh! so sore. I must get them well and strong--oh, yes! I must be well and strong against--against--then."

She lifted her head slowly where she stood alone, and a smile, like a summer breeze on still water, rippled over her mouth.

"He kissed me," she thought, "and he came to see me--all this long, long way."

A lovely dream shone in her face now.

"And if he does not come again until--until then--he will be glad--oh, he will be very glad!"

The thought of a future hour when the poor little soul should be rich with something of her own that would be dearest of all because not all her own, shone like a sleeping child's vision in her face. She went out into the bar and lighted a candle.

"So that's your sweetheart--not the lawyer man, eh?" said Mrs. Drayton, bustling about.

"I've no call to hide my face now--not now that he has come--have I?"

said Mercy.

"Well, he is free of his money, and I'se just been hoping you get some of it, for, as I says, you want things bad, and them as has the looking to it should find 'em, as is only reasonable."

Mercy did as she had been bidden: she went off to her bedroom. But her head was too full of thoughts for sleep. She examined her face in the gla.s.s, and smiled and blushed at it because he called it pretty. It was prettier than ever to her own eyes now. After half an hour she remembered that she had left the book on the table in the parlor, and crept down-stairs to recover it. When she was on the landing at the bottom, she heard a hurried knock at the outer door.

Thereafter all her dreams died in an instant.

CHAPTER V.

When Hugh Ritson stepped out into the road, the night was dark. Fresh from the yellow light of the inn, his eyes could barely descry the footpath or see the dim black line of the hedge. The atmosphere was damp. The moisture in the air gathered in great beads on his eyebrows and beard, stiffening them with frost. It was bitterly cold. The mist that rose from the river spread itself over the cold, open wastes of marshy ground that lay to the right and to the left. The gloomy road was thick with half-frozen mud.

Hugh Ritson b.u.t.toned his coat yet closer and started at a brisk pace.

"No time to lose," he thought, "if I've to be at the station when the north train goes through. Would have dearly liked to keep an eye on my gentleman. Should have done it, but for the girl. 'Summat on,' eh? What is it, I wonder? It might be useful to know."

With a cutting wind at his back he walked faster as his eyes grew familiar with the darkness. He was thinking that Bonnithorne's telegram might be an error. Perhaps it had even been tampered with. It was barely conceivable that Paul and Greta had ever so much as heard of the Hawk and Heron. And what possible inducement could they have to sleep in Hendon when they would be so near to London?

His mind went back to Mercy Fisher. At that moment she was dreaming beautiful dreams of how happy she was very soon to make him. He was thinking, with vexation, that the girl was a connecting link with the people in c.u.mberland. Yes--and the only link, too. Could it be that Mercy--No; the idea of Mercy's disloyalty to him was really too ridiculous. If he could get to the station before the train from the north was due to stop there, he would see for himself whether Paul and Greta alighted. If they did not, as they must be in that train, he would get into it also, and go on with them to London. Bonnithorne might have blundered.

The journey was long, and the roads were heavy for walking. It seemed a far greater distance than he had thought. At the angle of a gate and a thick brier hedge he struck a match and read the time by his watch.

Eleven o'clock. Too late, if the watch were not more than a minute slow.

At that moment he heard the whistle of a train, and between the whirs of the wind he heard the tinkle of the signal bell. Too late, indeed. He was still a quarter of a mile from the station.

Still he held on his way, without hope for his purpose, yet quickening his pace to a sharp run.

He had come within three hundred yards of the station when he heard an unearthly scream, followed in an instant by a great clamor and tumult of human voices. Shrieks, shouts, groans, sobs, wails--all were mingled together in one agonized cry that rent the thick night air asunder.