CHAPTER IX


Through all these days and weeks, Anne and Honey-Sweet were bearing
about the secret which her uncle had intrusted to her. Sometimes it
perplexed her and weighed heavy on her mind. Sometimes she forgot all
about it for days together. Then with a start there would come, like a
black figure stalking between her and the sunlight, the thought of her
uncle's strange appearance, of the danger which he said was hanging over
him if she told that she had seen him--told anywhere except at Nantes.

One night she dreamed that she told the secret. And the words were
hardly off her lips before she saw her uncle pursued by a crowd, ragged,
loud-voiced, wild-eyed people, like those she and Annette had seen that
day when, falling behind their schoolmates out walking, they had taken
a hurried short-cut and had run frightened along a dingy street. Anne
dreamed that she saw her uncle running--running--running--almost
spent--mouth open--panting breath. A moment more and the outstretched
hands would catch him. They were not hands, they were sharp, cruel claws
about to seize him. She wakened herself with a scream.

"No, no, no!" she sobbed, "I will never, never, never tell!"

The little package was still hidden where Mr. Mayo had put it. Once or
twice when she was alone Anne had opened it, but she always felt as if
some one was looking at her and about to question her, and she put it
hastily away. There were three rings,--one a plain heavy band of yellow
gold, one set with a blazing red stone, one with a cluster of sparkling