"I will follow you, though it should be to death!" he said, extending his hand.
"Herr Lieutenant!" cried George, fairly frantic with fear, for he was firmly convinced that this blind confidence would lead Gerald straight to destruction.
"Be silent and obey," Gerald ordered. "Yet I will not force you to follow. Stay behind, if you choose."
"I'll go with you," said the brave fellow, whose love for his officer was even greater than his superstition. "Where you are, I'll be also, and if you can't help it and must go straight into the witches' caldron--why, go, in God's name, and I'll go too."
Gerald loosed his sword in its sheath and examined his pistols; then they left the house and the young officer unconsciously drew a long, deep breath as they emerged from the small, close room, with its smoking fire and stifling atmosphere. Outside, storm, darkness and mortal peril surrounded his every step, but for the first time he felt Danira's hand in his, and climbed by her side to the edge of the ravine.
VI.
For nearly half an hour the little group pressed forward in a direction exactly opposite to the one by which Gerald had come to the village. Danira led the way and the others followed, but scarcely a word was exchanged, for all three had great difficulty in breasting the storm, which grew more violent every moment.
Yet this tempest was not like those that raged in the mountains of their native Tyrol, with hurrying clouds, mists, and showers of rain that wrapped the earth in their veil, where the forests shuddered and trembled, and the uproar of the elements seemed to transform all nature into chaos. Here no cloud dimmed the clear azure of the sky, in which the stars were shining brightly, and the moonlight rested clear and radiant on the rocky heights, stretching into infinite distance, rugged and cleft into a thousand rifts that intersected them in every direction; but the white moonbeams and the deep black shadows of the chasms everywhere revealed the same desolation.
Here no forest rustled, no reed quivered in the wind. The hurricane roared over the earth as if the spirits of destruction had been let loose and were now sweeping on in search of their prey, but its might was baffled by the cold, lifeless stone that could neither be stirred nor shaken.
There was something uncanny and terrible in this rigid repose amidst the fierce raging of the tempest, it seemed as though all nature was spell-bound in a death-slumber which nothing could break. Wildly as the bora raved, the earth made no response, it remained under the icy ban.