Sabina, perceiving where she stood, closed her eyes and took an involuntary step backward.  Abel called attention to his sign upon the walls.

“The carpenter will shiver when he sees that,” he said.

Then he rambled off, whistling, and she sat down and stared round her.  She told herself that deep thoughts must surely wake under this sudden experience and the fountains of long sealed emotion bubble upwards, to drown her before them.  Instead she merely found herself incapable of thinking.  A dull, stale, almost stagnant mood crept over her.  Her mind could neither walk nor fly.  After the first thrill of recognition, the light went out and she found herself absolutely indifferent.  Not anger touched her, nor pain.  That the child of that perished passion should play here, and laugh and be merry was poignant, but it did not move her and she felt a sort of surprise that it should not.  There was a time when such an experience must have shaken her to the depths, plunged her into some deep pang of soul and left indelible wounds; now, no such thing happened.

She gazed mildly about her and almost smiled.  Then she rose from her seat on the carpenter’s bench, went out and descended the staircase again.

When she called him to a promised tea at an inn, Abel came at once.  He was weary and well content.

“I shall often come here,” he said.  “It’s the best place I know—­better than the old kiln on North Hill.  I could hide there and nobody find me, and you could bring me food at night.”

“What do you want to hide for, pretty?” she asked.

“I might,” he answered and looked at her cautiously For a moment he seemed inclined to say more, but did not.

After tea they set out for home, and the fate, which, through the incident of the old store, had subtly prepared and paved a way to something of greater import, sent Raymond Ironsyde.  They had passed the point at which the road from West Haven converges into that from Bridport, and a man on horseback overtook them.  They were all going in the same direction and Abel, as soon as he saw who approached, left his mother, went over a convenient gate upon their right and hastened up a hedge.  Thus he always avoided his father, and when blamed for so doing, would silently endure the blame without explanation or any offer of excuse.  Raymond had seen him thus escape on more than one occasion, and the incident, clashing at this moment upon his own thoughts, prompted him to a definite and unusual thing.  The opportunity was good; Sabina walked alone, and if she rebuffed him, he could endure the rebuff.

He determined to speak to her and break a silence of many years.  The result he could not guess, but since he was actuated by friendly motives alone, he hoped the sudden inspiration might prove fertile of good.  At worse she could only decline his advance and refuse to speak with him.