‘Not Conjuror Trendle?’ said her thin companion, turning pale.

‘Trendle—­yes.  Is he alive?’

‘I believe so,’ said Rhoda, with reluctance.

‘Why do you call him conjuror?’

’Well—­they say—­they used to say he was a—­he had powers other folks have not.’

’O, how could my people be so superstitious as to recommend a man of that sort!  I thought they meant some medical man.  I shall think no more of him.’

Rhoda looked relieved, and Mrs. Lodge rode on.  The milkwoman had inwardly seen, from the moment she heard of her having been mentioned as a reference for this man, that there must exist a sarcastic feeling among the work-folk that a sorceress would know the whereabouts of the exorcist.  They suspected her, then.  A short time ago this would have given no concern to a woman of her common-sense.  But she had a haunting reason to be superstitious now; and she had been seized with sudden dread that this Conjuror Trendle might name her as the malignant influence which was blasting the fair person of Gertrude, and so lead her friend to hate her for ever, and to treat her as some fiend in human shape.

But all was not over.  Two days after, a shadow intruded into the window-pattern thrown on Rhoda Brook’s floor by the afternoon sun.  The woman opened the door at once, almost breathlessly.

‘Are you alone?’ said Gertrude.  She seemed to be no less harassed and anxious than Brook herself.

‘Yes,’ said Rhoda.

‘The place on my arm seems worse, and troubles me!’ the young farmer’s wife went on.  ’It is so mysterious!  I do hope it will not be an incurable wound.  I have again been thinking of what they said about Conjuror Trendle.  I don’t really believe in such men, but I should not mind just visiting him, from curiosity—­though on no account must my husband know.  Is it far to where he lives?’

‘Yes—­five miles,’ said Rhoda backwardly.  ‘In the heart of Egdon.’

’Well, I should have to walk.  Could not you go with me to show me the way—­say to-morrow afternoon?’

‘O, not I—­that is,’ the milkwoman murmured, with a start of dismay.  Again the dread seized her that something to do with her fierce act in the dream might be revealed, and her character in the eyes of the most useful friend she had ever had be ruined irretrievably.

Mrs. Lodge urged, and Rhoda finally assented, though with much misgiving.  Sad as the journey would be to her, she could not conscientiously stand in the way of a possible remedy for her patron’s strange affliction.  It was agreed that, to escape suspicion of their mystic intent, they should meet at the edge of the heath at the corner of a plantation which was visible from the spot where they now stood.

CHAPTER V—­CONJUROR TRENDLE

By the next afternoon Rhoda would have done anything to escape this inquiry.  But she had promised to go.  Moreover, there was a horrid fascination at times in becoming instrumental in throwing such possible light on her own character as would reveal her to be something greater in the occult world than she had ever herself suspected.