It is much easier to give such protection in intention than in deed;
but, as it happened, the deed was not required. The farmstead was
perfectly still as he went by it again.
He went on half a mile, passing only such friendly persons as it was
natural he should meet on the public road. They were few. Caius walked
listening to the sea lapping below the low cliff near which the road
ran, and watching the bats that often circled in the dark-blue dusk
overhead. Thus going on, he gradually recognised a little group walking
in front of him. It was the woman, Mrs. Day, and her three children.
Holding a child by either hand, she tramped steadily forward. Something
in the way she walked, in the way the children walked--a dull,
mechanical action in their steps--perplexed Caius.
He stepped up beside them with a word of neighbourly greeting.
The woman did not answer for some moments; when she did, although her
words were ordinary, her voice seemed to Caius to come from out some far
distance whither her mind had wandered.
"Going to call on someone, I suppose, Mrs. Day?" said he, inwardly
anxious.
"Yes," she replied; "we're going to see a friend--the children and me."
Again it seemed that there was some long distance between her and the
young man who heard her.
"Come along and see my mother," he urged, with solicitude. "She always
has a prime welcome for visitors, mother has.
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