But as he peered across the brook in an agony of suspense he was aware of a soft rustling movement in the brush, and his incredulous eyes made out a slim, straight figure that had pushed forward to stand on the snowy embankment beyond. He stared for a moment in the dazed wonderment of a man who suddenly looks upon a miraculous apparition. And then, unable to endure the anguish of uncertainty, he forced himself to speak.
"I'm over here under a tree," he said, striving to hold his voice in control. "If you're real, won't you please come across?"
He thought he heard a sobbing breath on the other side of the brook, and as he gazed with straining vision, the figure started forward, crossed like a shadow on the ice, and halted, to bend silently above him. The moonlight searched out the contours of a pale, bewitching face, revealing a pair of luminous eyes that gazed softly upon him.
He raised his head, watching with something of fear in his glance, as though half expecting an illusion of his dreams to melt away before him. "Alison!" he whispered unsteadily. "Alison Rayne! They said you were dead. It's you—?"
"It's I," a thrilling voice replied in his ear, and then, as though to dispel all further doubt, warm hands touched him, and he felt the vital contact of fingers closing over his. "You're hurt!" she faltered. "How badly?"
"Cracked shoulder, I think," he said. "If this tree were off me I could tell better."
The girl withdrew her hand from his lingering clasp, and knelt down to investigate. "It's crushing you," she said, with a catch of pity in her throat, "and you—you've had the courage to—you've nearly dug yourself loose. You must have been working for hours."
"I kept it up as long as I could stay awake," he answered with a faint laugh. "I was going to have a nap, and then try again."
She had been examining the underside of the trunk, and now she nodded with quick decision. "I can finish it by cutting through from the other direction," she asserted. "Only a few minutes!" She brought a clasp knife from her pocket, and moving around the tree, she crouched in the snow and began feverishly digging.
For a moment Dexter remained silent, but as he observed her tense, anxious face his eyelids drew together and the muscles of his jaw set with sudden resolution. "Wait!" he commanded. "Have you thought what you're doing?"