s woman who has worked for you so long; I will go
for Winifred."

"You must not come," he said almost harshly. "It is far too late; it is
far too wet."

He stopped to make her stop, but she only went on, getting much in
front. Then he ran up to her, laid his hand on her arm, and implored her
not to go.

There was nothing in his words or action that was precisely loverlike,
nor did such likeness occur to her; but in the restraint he put upon the
lover in him, his manner appeared to assume the confidence and ease of a
perfect friendship, and she, scarce noting much how he spoke or acted,
still felt that this advance of his gave her a new liberty to tell him
that she scorned his friendship, for she had something of that sort
seething in her mind concerning him. As to his request just then, she
merely said she would go on.

He was very urgent. "Then I will not go," he said, stopping again. "You
can't go without me, and if my going involves your going, it is better
not to go." He did not mean what he said, but he hoped to move her.

"You can go or stay as you think right," she said. "I am going to get
Winifred, poor lamb. I am not in the least afraid to go alone. I have
got a pistol in my belt."

So he went with her. They both walked fast. The road was wide and muddy,
and the night was very dark.

Trenholme noticed now for the first time that he walked in slippers; he
would as soon have thought of turning back on this account as he would
have thought of stopping if thorns and briars had beset his path. He
felt almost as if it were a dream that he was walking thus, serving the
woman he loved; but even as he brooded on the dreamlike strangeness of
it, his mind was doing its practical work. If Winifred and Mrs. Martha
were in the vehicle he had seen, what time they would gain while driving
on the road they would be apt to lose by their feebleness on the
mountain path, which he and Sophia could ascend so much more lightly.
Wherever their goal, and whatever their purpose, he was sanguine that he
would find and stop them before they joined the main party. He
communicated the grounds of this hope to his companion. His heart was
sore for his lady's tears. He had never before seen her weep. They had
passed the cemetery, and went forward now into the lonelier part of the
road. Then Trenholme thought of the warning Harkness had given him about
the drunkard's violence. The recollection made him hasten on, forgetting
that his sp