When she shines he can himself be seen. Standing in crouched attitude with the ivy tendrils festooned over his pale, bloodless face, he looks like a gigantic spider behind its web, on the wait for prey--ready to spring forward and seize it.
For nigh ten minutes he thus remains watching, all the while impatiently chafing. He listens too; though with little hope of hearing aught to indicate the approach of her expected. After the pleasant _tête-à-tête_, he is now sure she must have held with the waterman, she will be coming along silently, her thoughts in sweet, placid contentment; or she may come on with timid, stealthy steps, dreading rebuke by her mother for having overstayed her time.
Just as the priest in bitterest chagrin is promising himself that rebuked she shall be, he sees what interrupts his resolves, suddenly and altogether withdrawing his thoughts from Mary Morgan. It is a form approaching the plank, on the opposite side of the stream; not hers, nor woman's; instead the figure of a man! Neither erect nor walking in the ordinary way, but with head held down and shoulders projected forward, as if he were seeking concealment under the bushes that beset the path, for all drawing nigh to the brook with the rapidity of one pursued, and who thinks there is safety only on its other side!
"_Sainte Vierge!_" exclaims the priest, _sotto voce_. "What can all that mean? And who----"
He stays his self-asked interrogatory, seeing that the skulker has paused too--at the farther end of the plank, which he has now reached. Why? It may be from fear to set foot on it; for indeed is there danger to one not intimately acquainted with it. The man may be a stranger--some fellow on teamo who intends trying the hospitality of the farmhouse--more likely its henroosts, judging by his manner of approach.
While thus conjecturing, Rogier sees the skulker stoop down, immediately after hearing a sound, different from the sough of the stream; a harsh grating noise, as of a piece of heavy timber drawn over a rough surface of rock.
"Sharp fellow!" thinks the priest; "with all his haste, wonderfully cautious! He's fixing the thing steady before venturing to tread upon it! Ha! I'm wrong; he don't design crossing it after all!"