Coats' face softened. He put his arm about her. "You're forgetting that we Pennimans are not cowards, Sue." She looked at him with her heart in her eyes. "I'm just a woman when it comes to you, Coats--just a lovin' woman." In her agony of fear over him, Sue had thrown away the concealment of years; the truth stood clear, looked the man she loved straight in the eye. It struck queerly across Coats' tense nerves, the revelation of a thing quite unexpected, but having nothing to do with the burning present. He answered to it only vaguely. "Do your part, then, Sue. Do what I tell you to do. Don't give way.... And not a word of all this to your father." He bent and kissed her, then, putting her aside, went out. He went down to the woods, his eyes keen and searching beneath his lowered brows. He saw no sign of Ann, either in the open or at the edge of the woods, and went straight on, looking about him, but not pausing, until he came out on the Back Road. He had not expected to find Ann in the woods. In one of his first notes to Ann, Garvin had appointed Crest Cave as an afternoon meeting-place; Coats had made a mental note of it. He followed the Back Road until he stood clear of the woods, then looked about him. There was no sign of any one. As far as he could see, in every direction, fields and woods and brilliant evening sunshine; cattle in the pastures below, but not a human being in sight. Coats looked at the warm teeming country, then up at the looming Mine Banks, over which hung a faint blue haze, the mist from innumerable ore-pits which the spring rains had filled to overflowing. "The hell-hole of the Westmores," he always called it in his own mind. Then he struck off for it, directly across country, his vigorous stride carrying him along rapidly. XXIX "WHAT'S NOT KNOWN" Later, when the hollows lay in shadow and only the crowns of the hills glistened in the departing sunshine, Coats Penniman came back through the woods. Sue had gone about the house oppressed by the terror she tried to keep out of her face. She was gripped by the certainty that there was even worse trouble in store for them than merely the shame Ann had brought upon them. The thought of it made her weak-kneed and sick, yet she tried to do the usual things in the usual way. She persuaded her father to have an early supper and go to bed, and she sent Rachel to her cabin, gave her an unexpected evening off. They would have their wretchedness to themselves for one night at least. If only it did not end in tragedy! Coats' grimly purposeful look obsessed her. And in all her coming and going, from the kitchen landing, when she was down-stairs, from an upper window, while she waited for her father to go to sleep, she watched the woods.