'I take it, the time is now up.'
By a mile of engirding sea the prospect of escape looked so vain that one joined assent with a fleer. Placid as the sea's calm was the Alien's countenance, and he pulled on steadily. The leader from the helm leaned forward to regard him fixedly, finding his tranquillity consonant only with imperfect wits.
'You think better of resistance, nevertheless?'
'Truly I do,' he answered. 'I think better of resistance now,' and in his eyes was no reading of resentment or anxiety.
His glance turned with his thoughts to distinguish the roof that covered his mother and Rhoda. Dear heart, cried his, do your part and I will mine.
Rhoda by then was doing after her own thought and liking. Though fasting herself, poor child, that on the morrow the board might be the better spread, for Christian she was lavish. Wine she took that Giles had not lived to drink; of griddle cakes the best she chose, and also of figs from those she summer-time ago had gathered and dried. Then she wound the silly rowan in brown moss, knotted it up in her scarf, and cloaked herself, and went out on her fool's errand.
Some miles to the west, on the edge of waste, stood a landmark of three trees, and near by, off the path, a furze-stack. Thither by devious ways of caution came Rhoda on the first wane of daylight, and having done all, faced the drear without heart, crouching into shelter of the furze.
Poorly clad for such a vigil, thin from days of want, fasting, exhausted by excitement and grief, she had no strength left to bear bravely any further trial. Though Christian's desperate emphasis stood out to bar despair, she told herself his coming was impossible, and her spirit quailed in utter cowardice as she realised her own outlook. She was afraid of the night, and her engagement had taken no limit of time. Should the dreaded ice-wind of the season rise, there were peril to life; but her heart died under a worse terror, that increased as waste and tree bulked large and shapeless under drawing dark. For was it not the Eve of Christmas, when the strict limitations of nature were so relaxed that things inanimate could quit station, and very beasts speak like men, and naked spirits be clothed with form. Her mortal senses were averse. With desperate desire for relief she scanned the large through the longest hour of her life.
Night was in the valleys, but on the uplands twilight still, when against the sky a runner came. He, dear saviour.
But his footsteps made no sound; but he showed too white. Doubt of agony that this was not he in human flesh froze her, till he came and stood, and not seeing her close crouched, uttered his heart in a sound dreadful to hear.