CHAPTER XXII

AT WATERSMEET

Dinah was first at the tryst and doubted not that Maynard would come. The lonely, naked woods swept round her and she sat on a fallen trunk not far from where the Webburn sisters shot the grey forest with light and foamed together beneath the feet of trees. The day was dull and windy with rain promised from the south. Withered beech leaves whirled about Dinah's feet in little eddies, then rushed and huddled away together in hurtling companies--with a sound like a kettle boiling over, thought Dinah. Her mind was not wholly upon Maynard, for Joe Stockman's gloomy prophecy had come true in one case and Mr. Bamsey was indisposed from a chill caught at the funeral. As yet they were not concerned for him; but he had grown somewhat worse since the preceding day and Faith had sent Jane to fetch the doctor. Jane never declined a commission that would take her into Ashburton.

A smudge of black appeared in the woods and Maynard stood on the east bank of the river. Dinah rose and waved to him; then he ascended the stream until a place for crossing appeared. Here he leapt from stone to stone and was soon beside her. They wandered away and he found a spot presently, where the ground was dry with fallen needles from a pine above it.

"Sit here," he said, "a little while."

She had not spoken till now, save to tell him her foster-father was