“A warning?  Priscilla, what do you mean?”

Drawing in her needle and thread, she pricked it through the linen she held and looked full at him.

“Didn’t ye hear it?” she asked.

A sudden chill crept through the young man’s blood,—­there was something so wan and mournful in her expression.

“Dear Priscilla, you are dreaming!  Hear what?”

She lifted one brown wrinkled hand with a gesture of attention.

“The crying of the child!” she answered—­“Crying, crying, crying!  Crying for me!”

Robin held his breath and listened.  The wind had for the moment lessened in violence, and its booming roar had dropped to a moaning sigh.  Now and again there was a pause that was almost silence, and during one of these intervals he fancied—­but surely it was only fancy!—­that he actually did hear a faint human cry.  He looked at Priscilla questioningly and in doubt,—­she met his eyes with a fixed and solemn resignation in her own.

“It’s as I tell you,” she said—­“My time has come!  It’s for me the child is calling—­just as she used to call whenever she wanted anything.”

Robin rose slowly and moved a step or two towards the door.  The storm was gathering fresh force, and heavy rain pattered against the windows making a continuous steely sound like the clashing of swords.  Straining his ears to close attention, he waited,—­and all at once as he stood in suspense and something of fear, a plaintive sobbing wail crept thinly above the noise of the wind.

“Priscilla! ...  Priscilla!” There was no mistaking the human voice this time—­and Priscilla got up from where she sat, though trembling so much that she had to lean one hand on the table to steady herself.

“Ye heard that, surely!” she said.

Robin answered her by a look.  His heart beat thickly,—­an awful fear beset him, paralysing his energies.  Was Innocent dead?  Was that pitiful wail the voice of her departed spirit crying at the door of her childhood’s home?

“Priscilla! ...  Oh, Priscilla!”

The old woman straightened her bent figure and lifted her head.

“Mister Robin, I must answer that call!” she said—­“Storm or rain, we’ve no right to sit here with the child’s voice crying and the old house shut and barred against her!  We must open the door!”

He could not speak—­but he obeyed her gesture, and went quickly out of the kitchen into the adjacent hall,—­there he unbarred and unlocked the massive old entrance door and threw it open.  A sheet of rain flung itself in his face, and the wind was so furious that for a moment he could scarcely stand.  Then, recovering himself, he peered into the darkness and could see nothing,—­till all at once he became vaguely aware of a small dark object crouching in one corner of the deep porch like a frightened animal or a lost child.  He stooped and touched it—­it was wet and clammy—­he grasped it more firmly, and it moved under his hand shudderingly and lifted itself, turning a white face up to the light that streamed out from the hall—­a face wan and death-like, but still the face he had ever thought the sweetest in the world—­the face of Innocent!  With a loud cry of mingled terror and rapture, he caught her up and held her to his heart.