I was a happier man than ever when, after a very informal little ceremony in Father Michel’s quaint, crude church very early in the morning, we started to indulge a mutual wish to have a last look at the camp which had been so much to us.
What a ride that was! What memories it roused! How delighted was Gatrina with everything! And in what spirits! How we chattered and laughed, and laughed and chattered, forgetting for the time, selfishly if you will in our own happiness, the gloom and tragedy from which we had just emerged. The world appeared all bright and glorious for us, and care and trouble far away.
Karasch was with us, of course; solemn, reserved and taciturn as ever; but breaking into a sort of grim smile whenever Gatrina spoke to him to point out some bit of the road where some incident of that other ride had occurred.
Buller I packed off to Samac to go by rail and meet us afterwards at a place to which we could get the train from Tuzla on the other side of the camp. He did not belong to our hill comradeship and would have been in the way.
We were careful to have a guide this time; and how we laughed now when he told us we must have come at least ten or fifteen miles out of our way during that comradeship ride of ours by the compass. We could laugh at anything.
We turned aside to visit the hill where we had slept on the morning after the check by the two rivers, and Gatrina recognised with a positive relish the spot where she had washed on the brink of the stream.
And when at last we came near the long, stiff hill in the middle of which was the ravine leading to the camp, her excitement and pleasure were greater than ever. We chattered just like two glad children, first about the incidents of her flight and rescue, and then about that little contest of wills we had had the following morning, and indeed about every incident of the time at the camp.
Then came the camp itself, and Gatrina’s unbounded surprise that already men were there getting ready for the mining work. I told her what I had done in Vienna and that in the superintendent we might look to find our old enemy, Captain Hanske, the Austrian official with whom we had taken such rough liberties that memorable night.
We could stay but an hour there if we were to reach Tuzla before nightfall, the guide told us; and Gatrina and I spent the first few minutes in the little hut which she had occupied.
It was a place full of mingled reminiscences for us; and while we were there our thoughts slipped back to the moment when, as I knew and my sweet wife now confessed, we had fallen in love.