He led her into the hall and gave her a chair.  Then he called his wife from her library-room.  Ann at once knew that something more than the effect of exertion was to be read in the moving face.  The dull grey eyes of age stared at James Penhallow and then at her, and again at him, as in the vigour of perfect health they looked down at his old nurse and with kindly patience waited.  “Don’t hurry, Ellen,” said Mrs. Ann.  “You are out of breath.”

She seemed to Ann like some dumb animal that had no language but a look to tell the story of despair or pain.  At last she found her voice and gasped out, “I came to tell you he has run away.  He went last night.  I’d like to be able to say, James Penhallow, that I don’t know why he went away—­”

“We will not talk of it, Ellen,” said the Squire, with some sense of relief at the loss of need to do what he had felt to be a duty.  “Come near to the fire,” he added.

“No, I want to go home.  I had to tell you.  I just want to be alone.  I’d have given it to him if he had asked me.  I don’t mind his taking the money, but he took it out of my Bible.  I kept it there.  It was like stealing from the Lord.  It’ll bring him bad luck.  Mostly it was in the Gospels—­just a bank-note here and there—­sixty-one dollars and seventy-three cents it was.”  She seemed to be talking to herself rather than to the man and woman at her side.  She went on—­sometimes a babble they could not comprehend, as in pity and wonder they stood over her.  Then again her voice rose, “He took it from the book of God.  Oh, my son, my son!  I must go.”

She rose feebly tottering, and added, “It will follow him like a curse out of the Bible.  He took it out of the Bible.  I must go.”

“No,” said Penhallow, “wait and I will send you home.”

She sat down again.  “Thank you.”  Then with renewed strength, she said, “You won’t have them go after him?”

“No, I will not.”

He went away to order the carriage, and returning said, “You know, Ellen, that you will always be taken care of.”

“Yes, I know, sir—­I know.  But he took it out of my Bible—­out of the book of God.”  She was presently helped into the wagon and sent away murmuring incoherently.

“And so, James,” said Ann, “she knew too much about the fire.  What a tragedy!”

“Yes, she knew.  I am glad that he has gone.  If he had faced it out and stayed, I must have done something.  I suppose it is better for her on the whole.  When he was drunk, he was brutal; when he was sober, he kept her worried.  I am glad he has gone.”

“But,” said Ann, “he was her son—­”

“Yes, more’s the pity.”

In a day or two it was known that Peter had disappeared.  The town knew very well why and discussed it at evening, when as usual the men gathered for a talk.  Pole expressed the general opinion when he said, “It’s hard on the old woman, but I guess it’s a riddance of bad rubbish.”  Then they fell to talking politics, the roofing of the chapel and the price of wheat and so Westways settled down again to its every-day quiet round of duties.