With the severed cord, Allan climbed back to where Beatrice sat.
“Hold the rifle, will you?” asked he. A moment, and by the quick showers of sparks that issued from his flint and steel, he was examining the leather thong.
“Cut!”
“Cut? But then, then--”
“No tide or wind to blame. Some intelligence, even though rudimentary, has been at work here--is at work--opposed to us.”
“But what?”
“No telling. There may be more things in this world yet than either of us dream. Perhaps we committed a very grave error to leave the apparently peaceful little nook we've got, up there on the Hudson, and tackle this place again. But who could ever have thought of anything like this after that terrible slaughter?”
They kept silence a few minutes. The wolves now had sunk to a plane of comparative insignificance. At the very worst Stern could annihilate them, one by one, with a lavish expenditure of his ammunition. Unnoticed now, they yelped, and scratched and howled about the tree, sat on their haunches, waiting in the gloom, or sneaked--vague shadows--among the deeper dusks of the forest.
And once again the east began to glow, even as when he and she had watched the moon rise over the hills beyond the Hudson; and their hearts beat with joy for even that relief from the dark mystery of solitude and night.
After a while the man spoke.