About thirty yards from the corner of the house stood a clump of
odorous laurels, the scent of which we had been inhaling while we sat
at tea. For these she broke away at a run, nor looked back until she
was well within their shadow and I had overtaken her.
"Good boy!" she said, nodding again and smiling at me with her
desperately anxious face. "I would wish--I would very much wish--to
kiss you. But you mus' not come a-near"--she sighed--"it is not
healthy. Only you come with me. I dream of you, sometimes, all las'
night. 'What a pity!' I dream, 'and you so pe-ritty boy!'
Now you come with me, and I take you away so he never find you."
The woman was evidently mad.
"Please tell me what you have to say," I urged, "and let me go back.
They will be missing me in a minute or so."
"If they miss you, it is no matter now. He will kill them all, he is
so strong . . . as he killed all those others . . . you remember?
See, now, pe-ritty boy, what I have done for you, to save you from
him! He shut me up, in his other house--he has another house away up
in the woods, beyond where we met." She waved a hand towards the
hills. "But I break out, and come here to save you. He would kill
me also, if he knew.
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