“He’s white,” muttered Conover. “White, clear through!”
Desirée moved at sound of his voice, and opened her eyes. For a moment she gazed up into Caleb’s face with blank amaze. Then she knew. Up went her arms, like a waking baby’s, and about his neck. As he bent to kiss her the agony of his stiffened muscles wellnigh made him cry out.
Flushed, laughing, big-eyed from her long sleep, Desirée sprang to her feet. Her glance caught the white gleam of the tents below.
“Oh what luck!” she exclaimed, delightedly. “Not a soul astir! We can get back without anyone knowing. What time is it? Or has time stopped being?”
He rose to feel for his watch;—rose, and toppled clumsily to his knees. His benumbed body refused to obey the will that was never numb. But, mumbling something about having tripped over a root, he forced himself to rise and to put his torturing muscles into motion.
“You’re cold!” she cried, accusingly. “The fire’s out and—”
“Not a bit of it,” he denied, compelling his teeth not to chatter. “I’m as warm as toast. Never felt spryer in my life. Say, girl,” he went on, to turn the subject from his own acute ills, “you’ve had your wish, all right. You said you wanted to give the slip to a Simon Legree chap named Conventionality. An’ I guess we done it.”
His arm about her, her hands clasped over one of his aching shoulders, they made their way down the hillside to the silent camp in the waterside dusk below.
CHAPTER XXII
CALEB CONOVER RECEIVES NEWS
The night train “out,” full of brown and disgruntled returning vacationists, drew away from Raquette Lake Station. Caleb, in the smoking room, his hat pulled over his eyes, his eternal cigar unlighted, sat with shut lids, trying to summon up the memory of Desirée’s big brave eyes as she had bidden him goodbye on the dock. Instead, he could only recall the sweatered, cloaked crowd at the Antlers pier, waiting in the lantern-light to say goodbye to the launchful of departing guests; the two or three cards that had been thrust into his hand,—and of whose purport he had not the remotest idea; the screech of the launch-whistle, and the churning out of the boat into the dark; dragging Caleb away from the happiest hours of all his life.