"That's me," said Dick. "Next time that crop-eared, chrome-coloured coolie shows against the sky-line, I run for a rope or something."
The wrinkles disappeared from her forehead, and once more Amaryllis slipped her hand through the bend of his arm. She did it as for friendship or support, but her thought was for him. His rest had been nothing, and at any moment that deadly sleep might seize him again. She made up her mind that next time, even should they have to finish their walking by night, his sleep should be at least as long as that he had given her.
"I'm a pig to be cross," she said. "But I'm only not cross now because you make me laugh with your ridiculous good temper. But, Dick----"
She had felt that, without her linked arm, his steps would already be wandering.
"Next time it's too much for you, I'm going to let you sleep. You must."
"It's a quarter to three," he said. "If we missed that train at five-fifteen, we should have to wait till ten for the next."
"And it'd be much safer," Amaryllis broke in, "to wait on the moor, than in a village or a station where people could see us."
"Yes. I'm not clear-headed enough now to see into Melchard's mind, but I can still calculate on what I know. If he didn't suspect us, he'll go the round of his pickets, beginning with Gallowstree Dip. If he did suspect, he'll come this way after us, and run down towards the London road and look across the moor, along the Drovers' Track from the hawthorns and the white stone. He won't see us--we are in a fold till we get a mile further at least. He'll go on towards the main road, but when he meets his picket that nobody like us two has passed, he'll come back and try the Drovers' Track."
"We'll bank on that, then," said Dick, "--if we can find a bush or a ditch to hide in."
The faint path they were following here reached the lowest point of the depression which hid them from the road and from the cottage by whose back door they had left it, and soon began to rise.
The ascent, as they topped it, proved, however, to be concerned merely with crossing a spur, below which the path wound about the edge of a bowl-shaped hollow, rimmed and lined with dark-green, close-cropped grass; and at the bottom lay a tiny tarn.