Scott looked sharply in the same direction. Had he been alone, he would not have perceived her, for she was crouched low against a thicket of brambles and stunted trees midway down the embankment. She was clad in an old brown mackintosh that so toned with her surroundings as to render her almost invisible. Her chin was resting on her knees, and her face was turned from them. She seemed to be gazing up the line.
As they watched her, a signal near the bridge went down with a thud, and it seemed to Scott that the little huddled figure started and stiffened like a frightened doe. But she did not change her position, and she continued to gaze up the long stretch of line as though waiting for something.
"What on earth is she doing?" whispered Billy. "There are no wind-flowers there."
Scott slipped quietly to the ground. "You wait here!" he said. "Hold my animal, will you?"
He left the bridge, retracing his steps, and climbed a railing that fenced the wood. In a moment he disappeared among the trees, and Billy was left to watch and listen in unaccountable suspense.
The morning was dull, and a desolate wind moaned among the bare tree-tops. He shivered a little. There was something uncanny in the atmosphere, something that was evil. He kept his eyes upon Dinah, but she was a considerable distance away, and he could not see that she stirred so much as a finger. He wondered how long it would take Scott to reach her, and began to wish ardently that he had been allowed to go instead. The man was lame and he was sure that he could have covered the distance in half the time.
And then while he waited and watched, suddenly there came a distant drumming that told of an approaching train.
"The Northern express!" he said aloud.
Many a time had he stood on the bridge to see it flash and thunder below him. The sound of its approach had always filled him with a kind of ecstasy before, but now--to-day--it sent another feeling through him,--a sudden, wild dart of unutterable dread.
"What rot!" he told himself, with an angry shake. "Oh, what rot!"
But the dread remained coiled like a snake about his heart.
The animal he held became restless, and he backed it off the bridge, but he could not bring himself to go out of sight of that small, tragic figure in the old mackintosh that sat so still, so still, there upon the grassy slope. He watched it with a terrible fascination. Would Scott never make his appearance?