“I can see she used his body to do it. They often do that. He did it in a dream. His hand; her mind. I’ll question him.”
“And put a ready-made lie into his thoughts,” I exclaimed, angrily.
“It is witch’s work, more than his,” he repeated, stubbornly and doggedly. I felt I should lose my temper if I stayed longer, and tossing up my hands in despair at his folly, I gave up talking sense to him.
I washed off the traces of the blood from my hands, and having got materials for a breakfast, went away to the hut to try and think what next to do in view of this fresh disaster.
I don’t think I had ever been more completely cornered than I was by the position which faced me then. I was thirty miles or so from anywhere; I did not know the road for even a league from the camp; and I hadn’t an animal left worth calling a horse. If I attempted to leave with the girl, we should probably be lost, or break down by the way. Yet if I stayed where I was, we should have her pursuers back to fetch her; while, even if they did not come, there was an almost hourly risk that my own men would break out against her in order to deliver me from her enchantment.
Whichever way I turned I could see nothing but imminent peril for her—peril of death indeed; and cudgel my wits as I would, I could see no turning in the long, straight lane of danger.
I remember stopping midway between the tent and the hut, and setting down the things I carried, and glancing round at the circle of frowning hills with a confused and dismaying sense of feebleness. The breeze of the morning, fresh and invigorating as it was, seemed to grow hot, stifling, oppressive, until it was positively difficult to breathe freely. The hills had become suddenly as the walls of a prison, shutting me in, a helpless, crippled prisoner. Light, freedom, hope, life were all on the other side of them, but the path was barred and the way of escape blocked. My nerves were shaken and the mental perspective warped, for the moment, in the exaggeration of sudden alarm for the girl.
The sight of her brought me to my senses again. She appeared at the door of the hut and looking about her saw me and smiled. I must keep the knowledge of danger from her, of course, so I went down and pretended to busy myself with my packages while I pulled myself together.
I picked them up and went on to the hut whistling a strain of the “Star Spangled Banner,” and trying to appear as if I hadn’t a thought in the world above breakfast.
“Good-morning, Burgwan,” she said, with a sort of chary patronage and encouragement.