“But—­but I dug there,” cried Bates. (In his surprise the nervous affection of his breath had largely left him.) “I dug where the bank had fallen; for I had strange thoughts o’ what ye might have been driven to when I was long alone, and I dug, but his body wasna’ there.”

It was curious that, even after her confession, he should feel need to excuse himself for his suspicion.

“There was a sort of cleft sideways in the rock at the side of the stream; you’d never have seen it, for I only saw it myself by hanging over, holding by a tree.  No one would ever have thought o’ digging there when I’d closed up the opening with stones; I thought o’ that when I put him in.”

He got up and took a step or two about, but he gave no gesture or prayer or word of pain.  “The sin lies at my door,” he said.

“Well, yes, Mr. Bates, you drove me to it, but—­”

Her tone, so different from his, he interrupted.  “Don’t say ‘but,’ making it out less black.  Tell what ye did more.”

Then she told him, coolly enough, how she had arranged the bedclothes to look as though, she slept under them:  how she had got into the box because, by reason of the knot-hole in the lid, she had been able to draw it over her, and set the few nails that were hanging in it in their places.  She told him how she had laughed to herself when he took her with such speed and care across the lake that was her prison wall.  She told him that, being afraid to encounter Saul alone, she had lain quiet, intending to get out at Turrifs, but that when she found herself in a lonely house with a strange man, she was frightened and ran out into the birch woods, where her winding-sheet had been her concealment as she ran for miles among the white trees; how she then met a squaw who helped her to stop the coming railway train.

“We lit a fire,” she said, “and the Indian woman and the children stood in the light of it and brandished; and further on, where it was quite dark, we had got a biggish log or two and dragged them across the track, so when the train stopped the men came and found them there; and I went round to the back and got on the cars when all the men were off and they didn’t come near me till morning.  I thought they’d find me, and I’d got money to pay, but I got mixed up with the people that were asleep.  I gave the squaw one of your aunt’s gold pieces for helping, but”—­with a sneer—­“the passengers gave her money too.  I made sure she’d not tell on me, for if she had she’d have got in jail for stopping the train.”

“Puir body,” said he; “like enough all she had seen o’ men would make her think, too, she had no call to say anything, though she must have known of the hue and cry in the place.”

“More like she wanted to save herself from suspicion of what she had done,” said Eliza, practically.

She still stood before him on the path, the strong firm muscles of her frame holding her erect and still without effort of her will.  The stillness of her pose, the fashionableness of gown and hat, and the broad display of her radiant hair, made a painful impression on Bates as he looked, but the impression on two other men who went by just then was apparently otherwise.  They were a pair of young tourists who stared as they passed.