They had begun climbing the steep hillside, which was rocky underfoot, for the snow had barely clung there, with thickets at intervals, and groves of small trees rising black and bare in the moonlight. In ten minutes they neared the little house perched on the slope, with beside it a tiny orchard growing on a bit of fairly levelled ground. All was silent around it, and all dark, but for the moon, the lighted window hidden now by a turn in the rocky path.
Lucy stopped, panting, in front of the cottage, and looked back down the slope at the broad, shining river, and inshore at the dozen twinkling lights of the hamlet. The wind was blowing over the heights with wintry bleakness. A shiver of cold and apprehension caught her, but she fastened her coat closer and plucked up her resolution. Major Harding and Larry were beside her and curiosity was stronger in her than any other feeling—the longing to know the truth and be free from miserable doubts and misgivings.
“The windows have no curtains,” said Larry softly. “Let’s steal up and take a look.”
Major Harding complied in silence, his calm willingness suggesting to Lucy that he did not expect to find anything surprising in the lonely little hillside shanty. She herself began to doubt Larry’s premonitions, and was half prepared to see a harmless old German peasant couple sitting in the light of their solitary candle. So that when she had crept around the angle of the wall and, over Larry’s shoulder, peeped into the little room where the candle burned she almost cried out in her amazement.
Elizabeth was seated on a wooden chair not far from the window, her shawl thrown back from her head and her thin hands clasped nervously together. Beside her sat Franz Kraft, looking thoroughly frightened and twisting his woolen cap constantly between his strong, lean fingers. Both of them had their eyes raised toward a third person who had risen from his seat to stand before them, talking volubly, a burly, middle-aged German in rough countrymen’s clothes, with bristly hair and red, excited face. He spoke with authority, punctuating his words by gestures with the boatman’s visored cap he held in his hand.
“Karl!” said Lucy, catching her breath.
Major Harding echoed the word, his hand touching her arm.
At the other end of the little closed room a feeble fire burned, and before it sat an elderly man smoking a pipe and toasting his toes near the embers. He seemed quite indifferent to the talk that was going on around him.
Larry leaned forward as near as he could without discovery and tried to catch Karl’s eager words. But the night wind blew strongly through the frosty boughs of the orchard trees, and Karl’s rapid German came to the listeners’ ears an unintelligible flood of speech.
“We shan’t learn anything this way,” Major Harding whispered.