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His face, which was rugged, with a glow of weather-beaten health upon it, had a brightness, a strength, an eagerness, a sensibility, which were indescribable. "Well?" asked Trenholme rather feebly; then reluctantly he shut the door, for all the cold of the night was pouring in. Neither of him nor of his words or actions did the old man take the slightest notice.
Trenholme crossed the path and strode through flowery tangle and woody thicket like a giant in sudden strength, snapping all that offered to detain his feet.
Sophia Rexford and Alec Trenholme, after long wandering, came to the edge of this opening, and stopped the sound of their own movements that they might look and listen. They saw the small crowd assembled some way off, but could not recognise the figures or count them.
"If I had guessed you were coming here so promptly it would have been in ashes an hour ago," said Trenholme, grimly insistent on sacrifice. With a disconcerting change of manner the detective promptly assumed a dryly official attitude. "A mighty good job for you that nothing of the sort occurred," he said. "Your picture is your excuse, Mr. Trenholme.
"But " began the hermit. "But, oh," said the beautifulest, "of course hermits have great pots of gold and doubloons buried somewhere near three great oak-trees. They all have." "I have not," said the hermit, regretfully. "I'm so sorry," said Miss Trenholme. "I always thought they had. I think I must go now." Oh, beyond question, she was the beautifulest. "Fair lady " began the hermit.
He fidgeted now, rising, cap in hand. "I ought to go and look after him," he said, "if I only knew where to go." It struck Trenholme that Harkness had an idea where to go, and that his questioning was really a prelude to its announcement. "Where do you think he has gone?"
Bennett had already launched forth an answer to Sophia's enthusiasm. She continued, in spite of Trenholme's intervening remarks. "When I was a girl papa always warned us against talking on serious subjects. He thought we could not understand them." "I think it was good advice," said Sophia with hardihood. "Oh yes, naturally papa being a dean " Trenholme encouraged the conversation about the dean.
The rain falling through sunshine made a silver glory in the air in which he walked saintlike, his hoary locks spangled with the shining baptism. He did not heed that his old clothes were wet. His strong, aged face was set as though looking onward and upward, with the joyful expression habitual to it. Trenholme and his friend were not insensible to the picture.
A brave man, when examined, will confess all that he honourably may, but not more; so Trenholme confessed himself to be worldly, but against that he was forced to confess that a true son of the world would have been insensible to the torture he was groaning under.
Hutchins was inclined to grumble at her absence as an act of high-handed liberty, but Miss Rexford was not interested in his comments. She went back to her work at home, and felt in dread of the visit which she had arranged for Alec Trenholme to make that day.
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