At the same moment Lucy, too, caught the slight, crunching noise of a man’s boot on the snow, a little on their right. Her heart gave a quick, hard throb and all her eager curiosity returned, driving away her creeping dread of the lonely night forest.
“Don’t make a sound,” she breathed in Michelle’s ear.
Michelle, not needing the warning, was stealing lightly as a ghost in the direction of the footsteps, which now sounded nearer, as Herr Johann walked quickly on, unsuspicious of intruders on his midnight journey.
The girls dared not approach too near, pausing in affright every time a twig cracked beneath their feet or an owl hooted above their heads. They kept in sound, but not in sight of their quarry. In another ten minutes the footsteps turned sharply to the left and quickened speed. Lucy and Michelle crossed the road along which Franz had driven his cart, and went on for another mile until the forest began to thin a little, and slender birch-trees to mix with the firs and hemlocks. All at once the footsteps ahead of them stopped short.
The trackers stopped, too, trying to see the man in front of them. Inch by inch they crept nearer, hiding behind broad fir-boughs and peeping out between them, until they could see the trees thinned almost to a clearing around a tiny, gabled woodland cottage, a German hunter’s lodge. At the threshold stood Herr Johann, fumbling in his pocket for the key which he now produced and fitted in the door.
As he turned the lock he rapped on the door with his free hand and shouted, “Ludwig!”
Lucy and Michelle trembled, half expecting Ludwig to appear from among the trees around them. Herr Johann lingered on the threshold, casting piercing glances about the woodland. A light which had shone in the back window of the lodge was now moved rapidly forward, flickering and dancing as though a man were running with a candle in his hand. A man appeared in the lighted doorway. Herr Johann’s words, as he greeted him, were lost in the closing door. Silence redescended upon the forest and the two girls behind the fir-tree clutched each other and exchanged meaning glances.
“What now?” Lucy whispered. “Shall we stay? Oh, Michelle, I think perhaps after all it’s true that he’s only a hunter, with a queer taste for living in the winter forest.”
“Perhaps,” said Michelle doubtfully. As she spoke she suddenly pressed Lucy’s arm again, pointing to the trees beyond the lodge. A third man appeared, walking quickly toward the door, dressed, like Herr Johann, in hunting costume and wearing, like him, an air of conscious importance.
He drew a key from his pocket and let himself in. At this evidence of a prearranged meeting Lucy’s anger flared up hotly. She felt a real fury against these Germans who were stealing her peace of mind and prolonging the nightmare of war and conspiracy from which she hoped to have awakened.