Chapter Four
In windless calm under the pines, Reuben's dark-dilated eyes could still find the furrows where sled-runners had passed, and the half-moons of dainty hoof prints. Nothing stirred within the vague archway continually opening before him. Gradually, tree and rock and snow came to possess sharper lines, stronger shadows; somewhere, a birth of new light—"Ben," he said, "it's the moon."
"Where, Ru? I can't find it."
"Somewhere ahead...."
Since they came under the shelter of the trees—and that was a long time ago—Reuben had felt no longer the cold kiss of snowflakes. It had been nothing but a flurry, now ended. At a curve in the road he discovered, through a break in the treetops, a grayness brightening. He halted; Ben blundered into him, arms slipping clumsily around him as if in need of support. Dull rags of cloud dropped away from the naked radiance. "I told you, Ben. There she rides." Ben was smiling. "Ben—all's well?... I did right? We could not have stayed, and thou to be flogged, maybe put in the stocks."
"The stocks, was it?"
"Yes, old Anna was yattering about that too when they came home from the sermon, and Grandmother never said her nay."
"Of course thou'st done right.... They'll search. That snow wasn't enough to hide anything."
"No.... We've walked more than an hour—must have done five miles."
"We can walk another five." Though standing quietly, Ben was breathing too fast, his eyes too steadily fixed on the new light in the sky.