During the walk the messenger was curiously silent, and answered all Carna’s questions about her mother and her affairs in the very briefest fashion. All that could be got from her was that she lived on the main land, about twenty miles inland, in a northerly direction, and that since her marriage, now twenty years ago, she had seen very little of her mother. When they reached the outskirts of the hamlet she pointed out her mother’s house, and, making an excuse that she had an errand for a neighbour, disappeared. Carna, seeing nothing but a certain surliness of temper, possibly only shyness, in her companion, went on without suspicion. She reached the house, and knocked at the door. There was no answer. She knocked again. Still all was silence. Looking a little more closely at the place she could see no signs of habitation, no smoke, for instance, making its way out of the thatch (for chimneys did not yet exist, at least, in the poorer dwellings). The next thing was to peep in at the window, a wooden lattice, which had been left partially open. The room into which she looked was perfectly bare.
A suspicion rushed into her mind that she had been tricked, and that danger of some unknown kind was at hand. The strange sympathy which often makes the dog so quick to understand the feelings of man, made the big mastiff, Malcho, uneasy. With a low growl, showing uneasiness rather than fear or anger, he ranged himself at her side.
As she stood considering what was next to be done, a party of six men, one of whom led a horse, issued from the wood which bordered the little garden of the cottage.
“Can you tell me where I shall find one Utta, who, I am told, is sick, and wishful to see me? Can it be that I have mistaken the house?”
“Utta, my lady,” said one of the party, “is not to be found any more. She died a week since.”
“But,” said Carna, with rising anger, “a woman, who said that she was her daughter, told me, not more than two hours ago, that she was sick, and desired to see me. Why have I been brought here for nothing?”
“Pardon me, lady,” returned the first speaker, in a tone in which respect and command were curiously blended, “but you have not been brought for nothing. You have a better work to do than ministering to a sick old woman.”
