When she spoke
once to Daddy John her voice was unlike itself, hoarse and throaty, its
mellow music gone.
They gathered and took their places in silence, save for the old man,
who tried to talk, but meeting no response gave it up. Between the
three others not a word was exchanged. A stifling oppression lay on
them, and they did not dare to look at one another. The girl found it
impossible to swallow and taking a piece of biscuit from her mouth
threw it into the sand.
The air was sultry, light whisps of mist lying low over the plain. The
weight of these vaporous films seemed to rest on them heavy as the
weight of water, and before the meal was finished, Susan, overborne by
a growing dread and premonition of tragedy, rose and left her place,
disappearing round a buttress of the rock. Courant stopped eating and
looked after her, his head slowly moving as his eye followed her. To
anyone watching it would have been easy to read this pursuing glance,
the look of the hunter on his quarry. David saw it and rose to his
knees. A rifle lay within arm's reach, and for one furious moment he
felt an impulse to snatch it and kill the man.
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