No word passed between me and my companion as we hurried, deeper and deeper, into the fathomless woods. Sure of foot and, it seemed, of destination, he drew me unresisting by cloudy deeps of foliage, by starlit alleys, by ways so thronged and massed with trunks as to seem impenetrable. Often I shrunk before some imaginary charge of shadows; often cried out in the silent rush of woodland things across our path. There was no wind that could reach and buffet those packed desolations; no frost, save where in the clearings it could find space to bloom. And these, for precaution’s sake, we avoided, lest our footsteps should betray us. On and on we sped, till my heart was sick in my breast, and I cried out to rest and die. But he would not let me stop.
“Courage, little sister!” he cried; “we are within a cast of home.”
We mounted, after that, a long and gentle hill, from whose sides the trees fell away, till, on the summit, there was none. But here, sunk deep in the crest, was, as I could discern, an ancient gravel pit, whose slopes were rough with brake and brush to a giddy distance down.
“Come,” he whispered, and clasped my hand secure.
We descended by a path, that was no path to me, and, at the bottom, stooped under a very thicket of bush, and gained once more a sense of space and movement, but so deadly close-shut that for a little I dared not stir.
“Come,” whispered my companion again. “It is nothing but a cleft in the hill, but so overgrown above that no mortal would guess it there.”
Still I dared not move. When suddenly I felt his arm about me, and his lips on mine. Then I started to myself with a shock of anger.
“Is this to be a brother?” I cried.
“What else,” he murmured, “to give his little sister confidence.”
The low laugh with which he said it made my blood fire. I could have struck him in my fury.