"You won't touch him"—she nodded towards her grandfather's corpse. "You won't touch him to—to——"
"Is it strip him you mean? Very well, then, I won't."
"You will help me to bury him? He cannot lie here. I can give you no answer while he lies here."
"Right you are, again. Only, no tricks, mind!"
He stowed the guns under his left arm and gripped the collar of the old man. Mercedes took the feet; and together they bore him out—a light burden enough. Outside the hut a pale radiance lay over all the snow, forerunner of the moon now rising over the crags across the ravine.
"Where?" grunted the Corporal.
Mercedes guided him. A little way down the path, beyond the wall of the sty, they came to a recess in the base of the cliff where the wind's eddies had piled a smooth mound of snow. Here, under a jutting rock, they laid the body.
"Cover him as best you can," the Corporal ordered. "My hands are full."
He stood, clasping his guns, and watched Mercedes while she knelt and shovelled the snow with both hands. Yet always her eyes were alert and she kept her knife ready. From their mound they looked down upon the ravine in front and over the wall of the sty towards the cabin. Behind them rose the black cliff.
"Hark to the wolves!" said the Corporal, listening: and at that moment something thudded down from the cliff, striking the snow a few yards from him; rolled heavily down the slope and came to a standstill against the wall of the sty, where it lay bedded.