She was silent.  The indecisions of the habitually decisive are hard to deal with.  The lad was puzzled by her failure to say more.

“It is dreadful, Aunt Ann.  I think I ought to go and tell Josiah—­now—­to-night.”

She made no comment except to say, “Arrest is not possible on Sunday—­and he is safe until Monday or Tuesday.”

John Penhallow looked at her for a moment surprised that she did not say go, or else forbid him to go; it was unlike her.  He had no desire to wait for Sunday and was filled with anxiety.  “I think I must go now—­now,” he said.

“Then I shall go to bed,” she said, and kissing him went away slowly step by step up the stairs.

Staircases are apt to suggest reflections, and there are various ways of rendering the French phrase “esprit de l’escalier.”  Aware that want of moral courage had made her uncertain what to do, or like the Indian, having two hearts, Ann had been unable to accept bravely the counsel of either.  The loyal decisiveness of a lad of only sixteen years had settled the matter and relieved her of any need to personally warn Josiah.  Some other influences aided to make her feel satisfied that there should be a warning.  She was resentful because George Grey had put her in a position where she had been embarrassed by intense sectional sense of duty and by kindly personal regard for a man who not being criminal was to be deprived of all the safeguards against injustice provided by the common law.  There were other and minor causes which helped to content her with what she well knew she had done to disappoint Mr. Woodburn of his prey.  George Grey was really a bore of capacity to wreck the social patience of the most courteous.  The rector fled from him, John always had lessons and how would James endure his vacuous talk.  It all helped her to be comfortably angry, and there too was that horrible spittoon.

The young fellow who went with needless haste out of the house and down the avenue about eleven o’clock had no indecisions.  Josiah trusted him, and he felt the compliment this implied.

CHAPTER X

On the far side of the highroad Westways slumbered.  Only in the rector’s small house were lights burning.  The town was in absolute darkness.  Westways went to bed early.  A pleased sense of the responsibility of his errand went with John as he came near to where Josiah’s humble two-storey house stood back from the street line, marked by the well-known striped pole of the barber, of which Josiah was professionally proud.  John paused in front of the door.  He knew that he must awaken no one but Josiah.  After a moment’s thought he went along the side of the house to the small garden behind it where Josiah grew the melons no one else could grow, and which he delighted to take to Miss Leila or Mrs. Penhallow.  In the novel the heroes threw pebbles at the window to call up fair damsels.