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No one, therefore, was aware of their return. Edward Crown's presence in the neighbourhood was unknown. If David Windom's plan succeeded, the fact that Crown had returned with his wife never would be known.
"Nancy Strong is keeping house for her, her husband used to run the blacksmith shop here and did all of David Windom's work for him. He's been dead a good many years. Nancy is one of the finest women you ever saw. Her father was an Episcopal minister up in the city up to the time he died. Nancy had to earn her own living, so she got a job as school teacher down here.
"Young ladies!" gasped Alec, looking toward the door. "Yes, the flower committee itself, I suppose. I didn't know two of them. But one of them you ought to know, buddy, seeing as it's the daughter of your boss. Thomas Windom's daughter Avery, I believe they call her." Alec's heart gave a thump.
Alix's pride stood in the way of an appeal to her husband's father or to any one of his friends for assistance. It was she who insisted that they leave the train at Hawkins station and walk to Windom's house. They had encountered no one who knew them, either on the train or at the station; while on their cold, tortuous journey along the dark highway they did not meet a solitary human being.
"A dirty trick, eh?" said the young man, fixing his gaze on the blue-black summit of the forbidden rock. David Windom's daughter Alix ran away with and married Edward Crown in the spring of 1894. Windom was one of the most prosperous farmers in the county.
Once at the top, he sat down panting and exhausted upon the edge of the shallow fissure he had followed as a path up the rock, and again his thoughts went back to the night of the murder. This had been David Windom's route to the top of the hill. He found himself discrediting one feature at least of the man's confession.
The first thing she did was to have a strong picket fence constructed around the base of the hill leading up to Quill's Window, shutting off all accessible avenues of approach to the summit. Following close upon the publication of David Windom's confession, large numbers of people were urged by morbid curiosity to visit the strange burial-place of Edward and Alix Crown.
Windom's father had closed this shaft when David was a small boy, after the venturesome youngster had gone down into the cave and, unable to climb out again, had been the cause of an all-day search by his distracted parent and every neighbour for miles around. The elder Windom had blocked the bottom of the hole with a huge boulder, shorn from the side of the cave by some remote wrench of nature.
She was taken to England when she was eight by her haunted grandfather, not only to receive the bringing-up of an English child, but because David Windom's courage was breaking down. As she grew older, the resemblance to Edward Crown became more and more startling. She had his dark, smiling eyes; his wavy brown hair; her very manner of speech was like his.
Only a fabled giant could have carried the body of a man up that steep, tortuous incline. Why, he was exhausted, and he had borne no heavier burden than his stout walking-stick. That part of Windom's story certainly was "fishy." Presently he arose and strode out upon the rough, uneven "roof" of the height. He could look in all directions over the tops of the trees below.
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