Wild Youth

Chapter 9

THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES

"It's been a great day--great."

Orlando Guise leaned lazily on the neck of the broncho he was riding,

peering between its ears, over the lonely prairie, to the sunset which

was making beautiful the western sky. It was as though there was a golden

fire behind vast hills of mauve and pink, purple and saffron; but the

glow was so soft as to suggest a flame which did not burn; which only

shed radiance, colour and an ethereal mist. All the width of land and

life between was full of peace as far as eye could see. The plains were

bountiful with golden harvest, and the activities of men were lost among

the corn. Horses and cattle in the distance were as insects, and in the

great concave sky stars still wan from the intolerant light of their

master, the Sun, looked timidly out to see him burn his way down to the

under-world.

"Great--but it might have been greater!" added Orlando, gazing intently

at the sunset.

Yet, as he spoke, his eyes gazed at something infinitely farther away

than the sunset-even to the goal of his desire. He was thinking that,

great as the day had been, with all he had done and seen, it lacked a

glimpse of the face he had not seen for a whole month. The voice, he had

not heard it since it softly cried, "Oh, Orlando!" when the Chinaman

crashed down the staircase with the tray of cherished porcelain, and had

been maltreated by the owner of Tralee.

How many times since then had those words rung in his ears! Louise had

never called him by name save that once, and then it was the cry of a

soul surprised, the wail of one who felt a heart-break coming on, the

approach of merciless Fate. It was the companionship of trouble; it was

the bird, pursued by a hawk, calling across the lonely valley to its

mate. "Oh, Orlando!" He had waked in the morning with the words in his

ears to make him face the day with hope and cheerfulness. It had sounded

in his ears at night as he sat on the wide stoop watching the moon and

listening to the night-birds, or vaguely heard his mother babbling things

he did not hear.

It is a memorable moment for a man when he hears for the first time his

"little name," as the French call it, spoken by the woman he loves. It is

as the sound of a bell in the distance, a familiar note with a new

meaning, revealing new things of life in the panorama of the mind. By

those two words Orlando knew what was in the mind of Louise. They were a

prayer for protection and a cry for comradeship.

When Louise first clasped hands with the Young Doctor on her arrival at

Askatoon, the soft appeal of her fingers had made him understand that

loneliness where she lived, and to bear which she sought help. But the

"Oh, Orlando!" which was wrung from her, almost unknowingly, was the cry

of one who, to loneliness, had added fear and tragedy. Yet behind the

fear, tragedy and loneliness there was the revelation of a heart.

A courtship is a long or a short ceremonial or convention, a

make-believe, by which people pretend that they slowly come to know and

love each other; but lovers know that each understands the other by one

note or inflection of the voice, by one little act of tenderness. These,

or one of these, tell the whole story, the everlasting truth by which men

and women learn how good at its worst life is, or speak the lightning-lie

by which the bones of a dead world are exposed to the disillusioned soul.

This had been a great day, because, in it, physical being had joyously

celebrated itself in a wild business of the hills; in air so fresh and

sweet that it almost sparkled to the eye; in a sun that was hot, but did

not punish; at a sport by which the earliest men in the earliest age of

the world made life a rare sensation. The man who has not chased the wild

pony in the hills with the lasso on his arm, riding, as they say in the

West, "Hell for leather," down the steep hillside, over the rock and the

rough land, balancing on his broncho with the dexterity of a bird or a

baboon, has failed to find one of life's supreme pleasures.

In the foothills, many miles away from Slow Down Ranch and Tralee, there

lived a herd of wild ponies, and it had been the ambition of a dozen

ranchmen and broncho-busters thereabouts to capture one or many. More

than once Orlando had seen a little gray broncho, with legs like the

wrists of a lady, with a tail like a comet, frisking among the rocks and

the brushwood, or standing alert, moveless and alone upon some

promontory, and he had made up his mind that if, and when, there came a

day of broncho-busting, he would become a hunter of the little gray mare.

When the news came that the ranchmen for miles around were preparing for

the drive of the hills, he determined to take part in it, against the

commands of the Young Doctor, who said that he would run risk in doing

so, for, though his wound was healed, he should still avoid strain and

fatigue.

There is no fatigue like that of broncho-busting. It is not galloping on

the turf; it is being shaken and tossed in a saddle which the knees can

never grip, on the back of something gone mad--for the maddest, wisest,

carefullest thing on earth is a broncho, which itself was once a wild

pony of the hills, and has been hunted down, thrown by the lasso,

saddled, bridled and heart-broken all in an hour. When the broncho which

was once a wild pony sets out on the chase after its own, there is

nothing like it in the world; and so Orlando found.

The veteran broncho-busters and ranchmen gave him no vociferous welcome

as he appeared among them. Had it not been for the reputation which he

already gained for courage, such as he had shown in the recent affair

when he had driven off the men who were robbing Joel Mazarine, and also

for an idea, steadily spreading, that he was masquerading, and that

behind all, was a curly-headed, intrepid, out-door "white man," he would

not have had what he called a great day.

He could not throw the lasso as well as many another, but he could ride

as well as any man that ever rode; and the broncho given him to ride that

day was one sufficiently unreliable in character and sure-footed in

travel to test him to the utmost. He had endured the test; he had even

got his little gray mare, lassoing her like a veteran. He had helped to

break her, and had sent her home from the improvised corral by one of his

men. He had then parted from the others, who had dispersed to their

various ranches with their prizes, and had ridden away on the broncho

with which he had done such a good day's work. He had had the thrill of

the hunter, riding like any wild Indian through the hills; he had had the

throb of conquest in his veins; but while other men had shouted and

happily blasphemed as they rode and captured, he had only giggled in

excitement.

As he looked now into the sunset, he was thinking of the little gray

mare, with the legs like the wrists of a lady and the soft, bright, wild

eye, which had fought and fought to resist subjection; but which,

overpowered by the stronger will of man, had yielded like a lady, and had

been ridden away to Slow Down Ranch, its bucking over for ever, captive

and subdued.

Orlando was picturing the little gray mare with Louise on its back. He

had no right to think of Louise; yet there was never an hour in which he

did not think of her. And Louise had no right to think of Orlando; yet,

sleeping and waking, he was with her. Their homes were four miles apart,

although, in one sense, they were a million miles apart by law and the

convention which shuts a woman off from the love of men other than her

husband; and yet in thought they were as near together always as though

they had lain in the same cradle and grown up under the same rooftree.

There was something about the gray pony, with the look of a captive in

its eye, a wildness in subjection, like the girl at Tralee--the girl

suddenly come to be woman, with her free soul born into understanding,

yet who was as much a captive as though in prison, and guarded by a

warder with a long beard, a carnivorous head, and boots greased with

tallow.

Since they had parted, the day after Li Choo had averted a domestic

"scene" or tragedy, the search had gone on by the Mounted Police-"the

Riders of the Plains"--for the men who had attempted to rob Mazarine, and

to put Orlando out of action by a bullet. Suspicion had been directed

against the McMahons, but Joel Mazarine had declared that it was not the

McMahons who had attacked him, although they were masked. There was

nothing strange in that, because, as the Inspector of the Riders said

"That lot is too fly to do the job themselves; you bet they paid others

to do it."

Orlando had no wish to see the criminals caught or punished. Somehow,

secretly, he looked upon the assault and his wound as a blessing. It had

brought him near to his other self, his mate in the scheme of things.

There was something almost pagan and primitive, something near to the

very beginning of things in what these two felt for each other. It was as

though they really belonged to a world of lovers that "lived before the

god of Love was born."

As Orlando sat watching the sunset, Louise's last words to him, "Oh,

Orlando!" kept ringing in his ears. He thought of what had happened that

very morning before he started for the hills. Soon after daybreak, Li

Choo the c******n had come slip-slopping to him at Slow Down Ranch, and

had said to him without any preliminaries, or any reason for his coming:

"I bling Mlissy Mazaline what you like. She cly. What you want me do, I

do. That Mazaline, gloddam! I gloddam Mazaline!"

Orlando had no desire for intrigue, but Li Choo stood there waiting, and

the devotion the c******n had shown made him tear a piece of paper from

his pocket-book and write on it the one word "Always." He then folded the

paper up until it was no bigger than a waistcoat button, and gave it to

Li Choo. Also, he offered a five-dollar bill, which Li Choo refused to

take. When he persisted, the c******n opened his loose blue jacket and

showed a ten-dollar gold-piece on a string around his neck.

"Mlissy Mazaline glive me that; it all plenty me," he said. "You want me

come, I come. What you say do, I do. I say gloddam Mazaline!"

That scene came to Orlando's mind now, and it agitated him as the

incident itself had not stirred him when it happened. The broncho he was

riding, as though the disturbance in Orlando's breast had passed into its

own wilful body, suddenly became restless to be off, and as Orlando gave

no encouragement, showed signs of bucking.

At that moment Orlando saw in the distance, far north of both Tralee and

Slow Down Ranch, a horse, ridden by a woman, galloping on the prairie.

Presently as he watched the headlong gallop, the horse came down and the

rider was thrown. He watched intently for a moment, and then he saw that

the woman did not move, but lay still beside the fallen horse.

He dug his heels into the broncho's side, and although it had done its

day's work, it reached out upon the trail as though fresh from the

corral. It bucked malevolently as it went, but it went.

It was apparent that no one else had seen the accident. Orlando had been

at a point of vantage on a lonely rise about eighty feet above the level

of the prairie. Where horse and rider lay was a good two miles, but

within seven minutes he had reached the spot.

Flinging the bridle over the broncho's neck, he dismounted. As he did so,

a cry broke from him. It was, as it were, an answer to the "Oh, Orlando!"

which had been ringing in his ears. There, lying upon the ground beside

the horse, with its broken leg caught in a gopher's hole, was Louise.

Orlando's ruddy face turned white; something seemed to blind him for an

instant, and then he was on his knees beside her, lifting up her head,

feeling her heart. Presently the colour came back to his face with a

rush. Her heart was beating; her pulse trembled under his fingers; she

was only unconscious. But was there other injury? Was arm or leg broken?

He called to her. Then with an exclamation of self-reproach, he laid her

down again on the ground, ran to his broncho; caught the water-bottle

from the saddle, lifted her head, and poured some water between the white

lips.

Presently her eyes opened, and she stared confusedly at Orlando, unable

to realize what had happened. Then memory came back, and with it her very

life-blood seemed to flow like water through the opening gates of a

flume, with all the weight of the river behind. As her face flooded, she

shivered with emotion. She was resting against his knee; her head was

upon his arm; his face was very near; and there was that in his eyes

which told a story that any woman, loving, would be thrilled at seeing.

What restrained him from clasping her to his breast? What kept her arms

by her side?

The sun was gone, leaving only a glimmer behind; the swift twilight of

the prairie was drawing down. Warm currents of air were passing like

waves of a sea of breath over the wide plains; the stars were softly

stinging the sky, and a bright moon was asserting itself in the growing

dusk. Here they were who, without words or acts, had been to each other

what Adam and Eve were in the Garden, without furtiveness, and guiltless

of secret acts which poison Love. What restrained them was native,

childlike camaraderie, intense, unusual and strange. The world would call

them romancists, if they believed that this restraint could be. But there

was something more. With all their frank childlikeness, there was also a

shyness, a reserve, which would not have been, if either had ever eaten

of the Fruit of Understanding until they met each other for the first

time.

"Are you--are you hurt?" he asked, his voice calmer than his spirit, his

heart beating terribly hard. "I'm all right," she answered. "I fell soft.

You see, I'm very light."

"No bones broken? Are you sure?" he asked solicitously.

She sat erect, drawing away from his arms and the support of his knee.

"Don't you see my legs and arms are all right! Help me up, please," she

added, and stretched out a hand.

Then, all at once, she saw the horse lying near. Again she shivered, and

her hand was thrown out in a gesture of pain.

"Oh, see-see!" she cried. "His leg is broken." She loved animals far more

than human beings. There were good reasons for it. She had fared hard in

life at the hands of men and women, because the only ones with whom, in

her seclusion, she had had to do, had sacrificed her, all save one-the

man beside her. Animal life had something in it akin to her own voiceless

being. Her spirit had never been vocal until Orlando came.

"Oh, how wicked I've been!" she cried. . . . "I couldn't bear it any

longer. He wouldn't let me ride alone, go anywhere alone. I had to do it.

I'd never ridden this horse before. My own mare wasn't fit.

"See-see. It's my ankle that ought to be broken, not his."

Orlando got to his feet. "Look the other way," he said. "Turn round,

please. I'll put him out of pain. He bolted with you, and he'd have

killed you, if he could; but that doesn't matter. He can't be saved. Turn

round, don't look this way."

She had been commanded to do things all her life, first by her mother,

tyrant-hearted and selfish, and then by her husband, an overlord, with a

savage soul; and she had obeyed always, because she always seemed to be

in the grasp of something against which no pressure could avail. She was

being commanded now, but there was that in the voice which, while

commanding her, made her long to do as she was bid. It was an obedience

filled with passion, resigning itself to the will of a force which was

all gentleness, but oh, so compelling!

She buried her face in her hands, and presently Orlando had opened a vein

in the chestnut's neck, and its life-blood slowly ebbed away.

As he turned towards her again, Orlando was startled by a sudden action

on the part of his broncho. Whether it was the smell of blood which

frightened it, or death itself, which has its own terrors to animal life,

or whether it was as though a naked, shivering animal soul passed by, the

broncho started, shied and presently broke into a trot; then, before

Orlando could reach it, into a gallop, and was away down the prairie in

the direction of Slow Down Ranch.

"That's queer," he said, and he gave a nervous little laugh. "It's the

worst of luck, and--and we're twelve miles from Tralee," he added slowly.

"It's terrible!" Louise said, her fingers twisting together in an effort

at self-control. "Don't you see how terrible it is?" she asked, looking

into Orlando's troubled face but cheerful eyes.

"You couldn't walk that distance, of course," he remarked.

She endeavoured to get to her feet, but seemed to give way. He reached

out his hands. She took them, and he helped her up. His face was anxious.

"Are you sure you're not hurt?" he asked. "There's nothing broken," she

answered. "No bones, anyway. But I don't feel--" She swayed. He put an

arm around her.

"I don't feel as if I could walk even a mile," she continued. "It's

shaken me so."

"Or else you're hurt badly inside," he said apprehensively.

"No, no, I'm sure not," she answered. "It's only the shock."

"Can you walk a little?" he asked. "This poor horse--let's get away from

it. There's a good place over there--see!" He pointed to a little rise in

the ground where were a few stunted trees and some long grass and shrubs.

"Can you walk?"

"Oh, yes, I'm all right," she answered nervously. "I don't need your arm.

I can walk by myself."

"I think not--well, not yet, anyhow," he answered soothingly. "Please do

as you're told. I'm keeping my arm around you for the present."

Always in the past she had obeyed, when commanded by her mother or

husband, with an apathy which had smothered her youth. Now her youth

seemed to drink eagerly a cup of obedience--as though it were the wine of

life itself. She even longed to obey the voice whispering in her soul

from ever so far away: "Close--close to him! Home is in his arms."

With all her unconscious revelation of herself, however, there was that

in her which was pure maidenliness. For, married as she was, she had

never in any real sense been a wife, or truly understood what wifedom

meant, or heard in her heart the call of the cradle. She had been the

victim of possession, which had meant no more to her than to be, as it

were, subjected daily to the milder tortures of the Inquisition.

Yet she knew and could realize to the full that a power which had her in

control, which possessed her by the rights of the law, prevented her--and

would prevent her by whatever torture was possible--from friendship,

alliance, or whatever it might be, with Orlando. She knew the law: one

wife to one husband; and the wife to look neither to the right nor to the

left, to the east nor to the west, to the north nor to the south, but to

remain, and be constant in remaining, the helpmeet, the housewife, the

sole property of her husband, no matter what that husband might

be--vinous, vicious, vagrant, vengeful or any other things, good or bad.

"Why don't you look glad when you see me come in?" Joel Mazarine remarked

to her suddenly the day before. "If you'd had some husbands, you might

have reason for bein' the statue and the dummy you are. Am I a drunkard?

Am I a thief? Am I a nighthawk? Do I go off lookin' for other women?

Don't I keep the commandments? Ain't you got a home here as good as any

in the land? Didn't I take you out of poverty, and make you head of all

this, with people to wait on you and all the rest of it?"

That was the way he had talked, and somehow she had not seemed able to

bear it; and she had said to him, in unexpected revolt, that her tongue

was her own, and what was in her mind was her own, even if her body

wasn't.

Then, in a fury, he had caught his riding-whip from the wall to lash her

with it, just when Li Choo the c******n appeared with a message which he

delivered at the appropriate moment, though he had had it to deliver for

some time. It was to the effect that the Clerk of the Court in the

neighbouring town of Waterway wished to see him at once on urgent

business. The message had been left by a rancher in passing.

As Li Choo delivered the word, he managed to put himself between Mazarine

and his wife in such a way as to enrage the old man, who struck the

Chinaman twice savagely across the shoulders with the whip, and then

stamped out of the house, invoking God to punish the rebellious and the

heathen, while Li Choo, shrinking still from the cruel blows, clucked in

his throat. There was something in the sound which belonged to the abyss

dividing the Eastern from the Western races.

That night Louise had refused to go to bed; but at last, fearing physical

force, had obeyed, and had lain with her face to the wall, close up to

it, letting the cold plaster cool her hot palms, for now she burned with

a fire which was consuming the debris of an old life--the fire of

knowledge, for which she had to pay so heavily.

"You couldn't walk even a little of the way to Tralee, could you?" asked

Orlando, when they had reached a shrub-covered hillock.

"No, I couldn't walk it, I'm so shaken. I'm terribly weak; I tremble all

over," she added, as she sat down upon a stone. "But if I don't--if I

don't go back--oh, you know!"

"Yes, I know," answered Orlando. "He's the sort that would horsewhip a

woman."

"He started to do it yesterday," she answered, "but Li Choo came in time,

and he horsewhipped Li Choo instead."

"I wouldn't myself be horsewhipping c******n much," said Orlando.

"They're a queer lot."

Suddenly she got to her feet. "I won't stand it. I won't stand it any

longer," she cried. "That is why to-day, although he told me I mustn't

ride, I took that new chestnut, and saddled it and rode--I didn't care

where I rode. I didn't care how fast the horse went. I didn't care what

happened to me. And here I am, and--But oh, I do care what happens to

me!" she added, her voice breaking. "I'm--I'm frightened of him--I'm

frightened, in spite of myself. . . . He doesn't treat me right," she

added. "And I'm terribly frightened."

She raised her eyes to Orlando's face in the growing dusk--there is no

twilight in that prairie land--and there was that in it which made her

feel that she must not give way any further. In Orlando's veins was

Southern sap, mixed with Northern blood; in Orlando's eyes was a sudden

look belonging to that which defies the law.

"Don't--don't look like that," she exclaimed. "Oh, Orlando!"

Once more he heard her speak his name, and it was like salve to a wound.

He put a hand upon himself. "I'll go to Tralee," he said, "if you don't

mind waiting here alone."

"I can't. I will not wait alone. If you go, then I'll go too somehow....

It's twelve miles. You couldn't get there till midnight, and you couldn't

get back here with a wagon for another couple of hours from that. It

would be daylight then. I can't stay here alone. I'm frightened, and I'm

cold."

"Wait a minute," said Orlando.

He ran back to the dead horse, unloosed the saddle from its back,

detached from it a rain-coat strapped to the pommel, and brought it to

her.

"This will keep you warm," he said. "It isn't cold to-night. You only

feel cold because you're upset and nervous."

"I'm frightened," she answered; "frightened of everything. Listen! Don't

you hear something stirring--there!" She peered fearfully into the dusk

behind them.

"Probably," he answered. "There are lots of prairie dogs and things

about. The more you listen, the more you hear on the prairie, especially

at night."

There was silence for a moment, and then he added: "My broncho'll steer

straight for Slow Down Ranch, and that'll bring my men. You can be quite

sure there'll be a search-party out from Tralee, too, at the first streak

of dawn. You can't make the journey, so the only thing to be done is to

wait here. That coat will keep you from getting cold, and I'll cut a lot

of long grass and make you a bed here. Also, the grass is warm, and I'll

cover you with it and with pine branches."

"I can't lie down," she answered. "No, I can't; I'm afraid. It's all so

strange, and to-morrow, he--"

"There's nothing to be frightened about," he interrupted. "Nothing at

all, Louise."

It was the first time he had ever addressed her by name, and it made her

shiver with a new feeling. It seemed to tell a long, long story without

words.

"You must do what I ask you to do--whatever I ask you to do," he

repeated. "Will you?"

"Yes, anything you ask me I'll do," she answered, and then added quickly,

"For you won't ask me to do anything I don't want to do. That's the

difference. You understand, Orlando."

A few minutes later he had found a suitable place to make a kind of bed

of grass for her, and had prepared it, with his knife, cutting the

branches of small shrubs and grass and the scanty branches of the pine.

When it was finished, he came to her and said:

"It's all ready. Come and lie down, and I'll cover you up."

She got to her feet slowly, for she was in pain greater than she knew, so

absorbed was her mind in this new life suddenly enveloping her, and then

she said in a low voice: "No, not yet; I can't yet. I want to sit here.

I've never felt the night like this before. It's wonderful, and I'm not

nearly so cold now. I know I oughtn't to be cold at all, in the middle of

summer like this." She paused, and seemed lost in contemplation of the

sky. After a moment she added: "I never knew I could feel so far away

from all the world as I do tonight. But the sky seems so near, and the

moon and the stars so friendly."

"You haven't slept out of doors as I have hundreds of times," he

answered. "The night and I are brothers; the stars are my little cousins;

and the moon"--he giggled in his boyish way--"is my maiden aunt. She's so

prudish and so kind and friendly, as you say. She's like an aunt I

had--Aunt Samantha. She was my father's sister. I used to love her to

visit my mother. She always brought me things, and she gave them to me as

if they were on silver dishes--like a ceremony. She was so prim, I used

to call her Aunt Primrose. She made me feel as if I could do anything I

liked and break any law I pleased. But all the time, like a saint in a

stained-glass window, she always seemed to be saying, 'Yes, you'd like

to, but you mustn't.' She was just like the moon. I'm well acquainted

with the moon, and--"

"Hush!" Louise interrupted. "Don't you hear something stirring--there,

behind us?"

He laughed. "Of course something's always 'stirring behind us' on the

prairie, and things you can't hear at all in the day are almost loud at

night. There are thousands of sounds that never get to your ears when the

sun is busy, but when Aunt Primrose Moon is saying, 'Hush! Hush!' to the

naughty children of this world, you can hear a whole new population at

work, cracking away like mad. Say, ain't I letting myself go to-night?"

he added, giggling again and sitting down beside her. "I'm going to give

you just half an hour, and at the end of that half-hour you've got to go

to sleep."

"I can't--I can't," she said scarcely above a whisper. As though in

response to an unspoken thought, he said casually: "I'm going to walk

awhile when you've lain down, and then--" He pointed to a spot about

twenty yards away. "Do you see the two big stones there? Well, when I've

finished my walk and my talk with Aunty Primrose"--he laughed up at the

moon--"I'm going to sit down there and snooze till daylight." He pointed

again: "Right over there beside those two rocks. That's my bed. Do you

see?"

She did not reply at once, but a long sigh came from her lips. "You'll be

cold," she said.

"No, it's a hot night," he answered. "I'm too hot as it is." And he

loosened his heavy red shirt at the throat.

"If I've got to go to bed in half an hour," she said presently, "tell me

more about your Aunt Samantha, and about yourself, and your home before

you came out here, and what you did when you were a little boy--tell me

everything about yourself."

She was forgetting Tralee for the moment, and the man who raised his hand

against her yesterday, and the life she had lived. Or was it only that

she had grown young during these last two months, and the young can so

easily forget!

"You want to hear? You really want to hear?" he asked. "Say, it won't be

a very interesting story. Better let me tell you about the

broncho-busting today."

"No, I want to hear about yourself." She looked intently at him for an

instant, and then her eyes closed and the long lashes touched her cheek.

There was something very wilful in her beauty, and her body too had

delicate, melancholy lines strange in one so young. She was not conscious

that, in her dreamy abstraction, she was leaning towards him.

It was but an instant, though it seemed to him an interminable time, in

which he fought the fierce desire to clasp her in his arms, and kiss the

lips which, to his ears, said things more wonderful than he had ever

dreamed of in his friendship with the night and the primrose moon. He

knew, however, that if he did, she would not go back to Tralee to-morrow;

that tomorrow she would defy the leviathan; and that tomorrow he would

not have the courage to say the things he must say to the evil-hearted

master of Tralee, who, he knew, would challenge them with ugly

accusations. He must be able to look old Mazarine fearlessly in the face;

he would not be the slave of opportunity. He was going to fight clean.

She was here beside him in the warm loneliness of the northern world, and

he was full-grown in body and brain, with all the human emotions alive in

him; yet he would fight clean.

Not for a half-hour, but for nearly an hour he told her what she wished

to know, while she listened in a happy dream; and when at last she lay

down, she refused his coverlet of dry grass, saying that she was quite

warm. She declared that she did not even need the coat he had taken from

the saddle of the dead horse, but he wrapped it around her, and, saying

"Goodnight" almost brusquely, marched away in the light of the dying

moon.

The night wore on. At first Louise's ears were sensitive to every sound,

and there were stirrings in the hillock by which she slept, but she

comforted herself with the thought that they were the stirrings of lonely

little waifs of nature like herself. Though she dared not let the thought

take form, yet she feared, too, the sound of human footsteps. By and by,

however, in the sweet quiet of the night and the somnolent light of the

moon, sleep captured her. When at last Orlando's footsteps did crush the

dry grass, the sound failed to reach her ears, for it was then not very

far from daylight, and she had slept for several hours. Sleep had not

touched Orlando's eyes when, sitting down by the stones which were to

mark his resting-place, he waited for Louise to wake.