"Will you take me to him at once, please--now! Austin, I knew
something was going to happen--I felt it. That's why I was worried,
last night--I couldn't explain. And then shut up alone there, not
knowing what it was.... That old woman--she was dreadful, but she
wasn't unkind to me. Do you suppose she _knew_--that she just wanted
to get me somewhere safe?"
Who knew? Was there perhaps a spark of human feeling in that strange
warped soul, half unhinged by her own troubles, something that Mary's
chance kindness, that afternoon by the saw-mill, had reached and
touched? It might have been.
We walked down the hill, and I took Mary on the motor-cycle behind me
as far as Lennox's, leaving Herrick to follow on foot. Dick was
better. He had passed a feverish night, Lennox said, but the fever
had left him with dawn and he was in an exhausted but normal sleep
when we arrived.