"She will soon be herself again, with change of scene, and Horace for a playfellow," Mr. Desborough continued, turning to his wife. "Thank God, my dear, if the one child has been taken from us, the other is left."
By the close of that busy day everything was ready for departure. The long procession passed through the gates of the compound just as the glorious sun was sinking in its bed of ebony and gold; for deep black bars of cloud were crossing the flood of light which covered the western sky.
Mr. Desborough's horse was prancing in its impatience, while the coolies harnessed themselves to the curtained dandies. There was one for Mrs. Desborough, with Horace on her lap, and another for the ayah and Kathleen, so that the children could sleep away the greater part of the journey. Until the heaving of burdens and the buckling of straps were concluded, the ayah amused Kathleen by pointing to the setting sun, and gravely assuring her there were twelve suns, brothers, who shone by turns. This one was going away, and his elder brother, who was so strong he could kill a man, would come in his place. The ayah was very glad they would all be safe on the hills before the strongest of all the twelve took his turn. The younger brothers were much weaker; the youngest of all was so weak he could hardly melt the snow that fell on the mountains.
Kathleen thought that this must be one of the tales papa referred to.
The syce, who ran by the horse's head with a fly-flapper in his hand, was shouting to it to be quiet until the sahib was ready to mount. "O son of a pig!" he was crying, "O faithless, perverse one! have ye never learned to be still?"
Away they all went at last, the bearers keeping time with a long, monotonous, grunting sort of cry, to which the horses were too well accustomed to be frightened. They soon left the highroad, going at the rate of four miles an hour, by narrow paths, too narrow for any cart or carriage. Mounting wave after wave of hill, higher and higher, sometimes winding by the edge of a precipice, or climbing the steep side of a giant cliff, then almost tumbling down some mountain valley, on, on they went, with a slow and even swing, whilst the coolies laughed and chatted as if they were almost enjoying the heavy burdens which English arms could never have lifted. Up and up once more, as the moon shone forth with its silver radiance, bathing the stately forest trees with its soft, clear light, and making the dark shadows which rested on the deep ravines all the blacker by contrast. They were passing the two-storied stone-built castle of a mountain chief, perched like a gigantic bird's nest on the verge of a tree-crowned height. A bright and gurgling mountain stream was dashing and foaming by its side as it leaped from height to height. The travellers were sprinkled with its flashing spray as they crossed the edge of the torrent, little dreaming that news of Carl would await them there on their return. But now the scream of the night-owls, and the flap of the vultures' wings, and the ever-increasing cries of the jackals, echoed all around.
"But the darkest hour of all the night,
Is that which brings us day."
Oh, if Mr. and Mrs. Desborough could have understood the silent lesson that midnight journey might have taught them, it would have soothed their heartache. They could see no ending to their night of sorrow; they scarcely thought the soothing touch of time would ever dull the sharpness of their grief. But every night does end.
The first pale gleam of the coming day showed Kathleen the sloping roof of a white-walled bungalow, peeping amid a forest of pine trees high up overhead. Should they ever reach it? The flowers which covered those steep hillsides began to open their petals and drink in the drop of dew that was falling for each and all.
Racy woke up with laughing eyes and outstretched hands, clamouring for the bright, many-coloured dahlias which grew by thousands in their path.