Her dim eyes were fixed on me with
a terrible wistfulness, as though she longed to speak and could not. I
felt a great pity for the old dog. What a sad lot is theirs, depending
on our presence as they do for the light in their sky, to whom our
slightest absence is the absence of death.
"Was nothing ever heard of him?" I asked after that silence.
"Nothing. Some said that he got on board a hooker and was carried to
Liverpool and got off to America. Others said the same hooker--she was a
stranger in these parts--was swept out to sea and, in the big storm that
broke that very week, foundered."
"It is most likely," said I, "for if he were living he would never have
left them in suspense all these years."
"There, you're wrong, Miss Bawn. Master Luke is not dead."
Dido stirred uneasily and whimpered.
"He's not dead, Miss Bawn, for if he was dead the banshee would have
cried. And the dead coach would have driven up with a rattle and stopped
at our door. It never has, Miss Bawn. What you've heard has never
stopped at our doors. To hear wheels in the distance is nothing. As for
the cryin' in the shrubbery, that is another story. Some day I may tell
it to you, child.
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