Page:Cornelia Meigs--The Pool of Stars.djvu/203

 just—just because there might be something in them after all."

He ceased speaking and closed his eyes, worn out by the effort of confession.

"He used to watch by the garden gate long before Miss Miranda's cousin ever showed himself," was Betsey's whispered comment to David. "He was sitting there on the bench in the dark, that night we sat by the pool and Miss Miranda told us the story of the green jade tree. He was probably watching on the very evening that Donald Reynolds finally came."

"Yes," David reminded her bitterly, "and slipped away on a chase after a will-o'-the-wisp, lit his candle and came up here to this place when he might have been of some real use at home. He even brought us there after him, though he did not know it, just at the time when the man he dreaded had really come. If he had only been sensible—"

"Don't let him think of that," said Betsey. "Yes, he went at just the wrong minute but he must be kept from remembering it."

Michael must have suspected that their whispered discussion concerned the truth of his strange notions.

"Maybe I was wrong," he said miserably, "but did not my own eyes see Something stand there by the pool, did not my ears hear a splash in the water