WYLDER'S HAJVD. 435
Perhaps the Vicar was thinking of the church-yard,
and how he would like, when his time came, to lie beside
the golden-haired little comrade of his walks. So Dolly
despatched the messenger with a lantern, and thus it was
there came a knocking at the door of Redman's Farm at
that unseasonable hour. For some time old Tamar heard
the clatter in her sleep, disturbing and mingling with her
dreams. But in a while she wakened quite, and heard the
double knocks one after another in quick succession; and
huddling on her clothes, and muttering to herself all the
way, she got into the hall, and standing a couple of yards
away from the door, answered in shrill and querulous
tones, and questioning the messenger in the same breath.
How could she tell what it might or might not portend?
Her alarms quickly subsided, however, for she knew the
voice well.
So the story was soon told. Poor little Fairy; it was
doubtful if he was to see another morning; and the maid
being wanted at home, old Tamar undertook the message
to Brandon Hall, where her young mistress was, and sal-
lied forth in her cloak and bonnet, under the haunted trees
of Redman's Dell.
Her route lay, as by this time my reader is well aware,
by that narrow defile reached from Redman's Farm by a
pathway which scales a flight of rude steps, the same
which Stanley Lake and his sister had mounted on the
night of Mark Wylder's disappearance.
Tamar knew the path very well. It was on the upper
level of it that she had held that conference with Stanley
Lake, which obviously referred to that young gentleman's
treatment of the vanished Mark. As she came to this
platform, round which the trees receded a little so as to
admit the moonlight, the old woman was tired.
She would have gladly chosen another spot to rest in,