But he never gave the signal. He
shot nothing. His failure seemed to amuse and even please him. A faint,
excited colour came into his cheeks, lashed up by the wind and rain. And
once, a hare running out from under his feet, he gave a wild "halloo!"
like a boy and set off in pursuit, headlong down the stony hillside, his
gun at full cock, threatening indiscriminate destruction.
"You might have killed yourself," Robert said angrily. But Cosgrave
laughed, his eyes narrowed to blue-grey slits as though he did not want
Stonehouse to see all that was in them.
"I shouldn't have minded," he panted, "going off on the crest like
that--I wanted to run--I forgot."
"Well, for the Lord's sake, don't forget."
But for an instant at least he knew what Cosgrave meant. It had been the
sight of that downward rushing hill and the sudden choking exultation.
He had felt it too--that night in Acacia Grove in pursuit of the Greatest
Show--and once again. He could smell the scent of the trees and the
young grass blowing in his face.
And at the bottom there had been a mysterious wood like a deep, green
pool.
Then on the eighth day Cosgrave disappeared. He had set out in the early
morning for the nearest station to fetch their letters and fresh
provisions, and at dusk a village youth reached Stonehouse with a note
which had been scrawled in such haste that it was almost illegible. It
was as though Cosgrave had yielded suddenly and utterly to a prolonged
pressure.
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