“Well, just tell me first who he is, then, and you shall go at once,” said Olivia, persuasively.

The old woman, writhing nervously under the clasp of Miss Denison’s hand, evidently cast about in her mind for a means of getting free while committing herself as little as possible. The reluctant words which at last came out were not very well chosen, however.

“I’ll tell ye this, then,” she croaked, in a broken whisper, peering round with her sunken eyes as if to be sure the treasonable communication[Pg 19] she was making was not overheard by the person concerned. “Yon gentleman, as ye call him, is not fit company for young ladies. And others have found it oot to their cost—so fowk say,” she added, hastily. Then, as Olivia released her arm and she tottered away over the hard ground, she looked back to add, in a querulous and anxious tone, “But don’t ye tak’ it frae me, mind. I nobbut told ye what I’ve heerd say.”

[Pg 19]

Olivia turned back towards the open door of the dreary house, feeling beyond measure miserable and disconsolate. The dimly seen figure of her friend of the afternoon had disappeared; the disobliging old woman who was at least a fellow-creature, was rapidly hobbling out of sight; while the words which had just, with so much difficulty, been forced out of her, seemed in the hag’s mouth to have acquired the chilling significance of a curse. Lucy felt this too, for coming closer to her mistress she half whispered—

“Oh, Miss Olivia, if there was really such things as witches, I should believe that old crone was one.”

“Nonsense! Come inside, and let us see what’s to be done.”

“Oh, you’re not going in again—all by ourselves! Oh, miss, just think of that upstairs room!” wailed the poor girl.

“Now, look here, Lucy, you mustn’t be ridiculous. We’re in a dreadful plight, and we’ve got to make the best of it. If you give way to silly fancies instead of doing your best to help me, I shall have to take you to that inn at the corner and leave you there while I come back and shift for myself as best I can.”

Lucy, who loved her young mistress, grew sober and good immediately.

“You know I’ll do what I can, Miss Olivia,” she said, suppressing a sob of alarm as a dull sound, apparently from the barn opposite, reached their ears.

Olivia listened. The 

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