The girl
waited, walked here and there, scanned the footpath and the road, returned,
sat down in patience, ate a cake she had brought, and so whiled the long
minutes away. The fears grew as hour and half-hour passed--fears for him,
not herself. The crowning despair did not touch her mind till later, and
her first sorrow was a simple terror that harm had fallen upon the man. He
had told her that he valued life but little, that at best no great length
of days awaited him; and now she thought that wandering about the cliffs by
night he might have met the death he did not fear. Then she remembered he
was but a sick man always, with frail breathing parts; and her thoughts
turned to the shed, and she pictured him lying ill there, unable to
communicate with friends, perhaps waiting and praying long hours for her
footfall as she had been waiting and praying for his. Upon this most
plausible possibility striking Joan, her heart beat at her breast and her
cheeks grew white. She rose from her seat upon the cliff, turned her face
to the cow-byre and made a few quick steps in that direction. Then a vague
flutter of sense, as of warning where no danger is visible, slowed her
speed for a moment; but her heart was strung to action, and the strange new
voice did not sound like Nature's, so she put it aside and let it drown
into silence before the clamor of fear for "Mister Jan's" well-being.
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