Caleb at the time had been but mildly interested in the tale. The fact that Desirée could translate such queer-looking words was to him the most noteworthy feature of the whole affair. Now, with a whimsical comparison to his own case, the incident recurred to him.
Was he not, like Siegmund, keeping watch and ward in the wilderness over the unconscious woman of his heart? Was not the Brunhilde of ambition standing there somewhere in the mystic star-shadows before him, pointing out all that might be his were he to renounce love? And was he not making reply as defiantly, if perhaps not in quite such highflown terms, as had that Dutch chap in the bearskin clothes?
The idea tickled Conover’s torpid imagination; he dwelt upon it with some pride at his own powers of analogy. Then he fell to dreaming of his vast new happiness, of the golden vista that stretched before him and Desirée. And again a wonder, almost holy, filled his heart.
The night voices ceased. Brunhilde, piqued at such unwonted obstinacy from one who had ever heretofore been her slave, had scuttled back to Valhalla in a fine fit of rage; leaving this latter day Siegmund and Sieglinde to their own foolish, self-chosen fate. The cold pressed in more and more cruelly as the night waned. It pierced at times through Caleb’s numbness. He had great ado to keep his teeth from chattering so loudly as to wake the exhausted girl on his breast. The stars grew dim. The dawn-wind breathed across the sky. A paleness crept over the eastern horizon of the fog-sea. The man’s heavy head nodded;—once—and again,—then hung still.
With a sensation of being stared at, Caleb Conover opened his eyes. The pale shimmer in the east had given place to gray dawn. The dawn-wind, too, had waxed stronger; sweeping the fog before it. No longer were the man and woman on an island; but on a hilltop whence on every side stretched away leagues of dull green landscape. Only over the pond did the mist still hover. Directly below, not a quarter mile away, lay the camp.
Nor were they alone on their wonder-hill. On the far side of the dead fire Jack Hawarden stood eyeing them. And his face was as gray and as lifeless as the strewn ashes at his feet.
Conover and the lad looked at each other without speaking. Long and expressionlessly Jack gazed at the waking and the sleeping. Conover noted that the boy’s eyes were haggard and that the youth and jollity had been stricken from his face as by a blow. It was Hawarden who spoke first:
“No one down there is awake yet,” he said, whispering so low that the girl’s slumber was not broken. “I woke up and missed you. I came out of the tent and saw you up here. I didn’t know when you would wake and I was afraid the others might see. So I came. Don’t let her know.”
There was a catch in his breath at the last words. He turned abruptly on his heel and sped down the hillside; his stockinged feet making no sound on the damp mold. Caleb looked dazedly after his receding figure.