"Poor souls!" he thought; "in an hour I shall be warm and dry and comfortable, and to-morrow all this will be forgotten; but for them there is no comfort, no better to-morrow."
Stay a minute, my lad! Do not go too fast and reckon without your host, either for yourself or others. Joy may light up the dim eye, hope fan the aching brow; and you,—after all you have seen and undergone even in your short life,—how dare you count upon the events of the next hour,—nay, of the next moment?
He climbed the hill stoutly but slowly; for it was steep, and his bags were heavy. The wicked wind, too, fought with him all the way up, and the rain, which had lately begun to fall, came loaded with small particles of hail, as if it sought to aid the wind in keeping him back till their united force could put out the beacon-fire. But the pine was full of resin, and it burned on, with the flame and the smoke whirled about by the wind but never extinguished, until at length he stood on the windward side of the fire and looked round, as if expecting to see the man who lighted it.
There was no one there, however; and the youth, who, it must be acknowledged, was of a somewhat eager and impatient temper and apt to come to hasty conclusions, fancied for a moment or two that those he should have found there had grown weary of waiting in that boisterous night, and had left him to enjoy its pleasures or its terrors by himself. A moment after, however, as the flame swayed a little more to the westward, he caught a glimpse of the ground on the other side of the hill sinking rapidly down into a little dell where some less arid soil seemed to have settled,—enough at least to bear some scanty herbage, a few low bushes, and some thin pines; and there, amongst the latter, appeared a small fixed light. It might be a candle in a cottage-window, and probably was; for it was too red for a jack-o'lantern.
"Ah! I can at least find out where I am," thought the lad; "but I dare say the men are there, taking care of their own skins and little caring about mine."
Thus thinking, he began to descend, and had not proceeded far when a voice hailed him in French. The lad made no answer, but went on; for, to say sooth, he was somewhat moody with all the events of the last three or four days.
"Is that you, Master Ned, I say?" repeated the voice, in English, but with a very strong foreign accent.
"Ay, ay!" replied the youth; "but how the devil did you expect me to find you if you did not stay by the fire?"
"Oh, we kept a good look-out," answered a stout man of some five-and-thirty years of age, who was advancing to meet him. "We have waited for you by the fire long enough these two last nights; and, as we could see any one who came across the blaze, there was no use of our getting frozen, or melted, or blown away on the top of the hill. But what has made you so long behind? You were to have been here on Tuesday night: so the letters said. What kept you?"