“Yes, it’s he who was in the cottage. It’s he Adelheid was sent to talk with yesterday. Michelle, if we could find out where he goes now!”
Lucy’s suggestion was scarcely more than a spoken wish. She expected Michelle’s instant disapproval, for in the old days at Château-Plessis the French girl had often dissuaded her from foolhardy exploits and counselled the patience war’s perils had taught. But now Michelle seemed to feel differently. They were on German soil, it was true, but not under German rule. Lucy saw her blue eyes flash in the moonlight as her glance followed Herr Johann on his hurried way into the forest. She caught Lucy’s arm closer in hers, saying breathlessly:
“Let us follow him, Lucy! Surely the way he goes must teach us something.”
Lucy’s devouring curiosity at this fresh proof of the forest mystery swept away her lingering fear. With Michelle beside her she was ready for adventure. Her longing was so great to know at last the answer to the riddle, she drew Michelle almost at a run through the fringe of fir-trees, along the same path by which she and Alan had stalked the Germans a few days before.
The girls did not say a word as they hurried around the clearing, their quick breath white in the frosty moonlight, their cautious steps making little sound upon the snow. Herr Johann walked fast, for when they reached the point at which he had entered the forest he had already disappeared. They paused uncertainly, with an uncomfortable feeling that from behind one of the low-branched fir-trees he might be watching them.
“He’s gone. Shall we go on?” whispered Lucy, suddenly weakening,
“He cannot be far ahead, though,” Michelle answered in the same hushed tone. “Let us go on a little.”
They crept between the trees, looking from right to left, and fancying they saw the German’s figure beside every shadowy tree-trunk, and in every shade of swaying pine-boughs against moonlit snow. There were footprints in the snow in front of them but it was hard to tell if they were new or old. Lucy tried to remember the way she and Alan had followed, but the forest held few landmarks to a stranger and she soon lost all definite sense of direction.
“I think we’re idiots. We can’t find him,” she said to Michelle after another quarter of a mile. “Yet I hate to give up.”
“Shall we go a little further?” proposed Michelle, doubtfully. “I thought I heard a step.”