Morning had importuned their shutters long before Markham awoke and gazed with startled eyes at the diagonal bar of orange light which cut the obscurity of their hiding place. Then, rubbing his eyes, he stumbled to his feet and stared at his watch. It was nine o'clock. Hermia still slept, huddled under her overcoat, one rosy cheek pillowed on her open palm, her tumbled hair flooding riotously about her shoulders. Markham stopped a moment to gaze at her again, but she stirred under his look, so he moved quickly away to the door and peered cautiously out, searching the forest with eager eyes. Gaining courage, he went out, making the round of the house with eyes and ears intent. There was much ado among the tree tops and a scurrying of four-footed among the underbrush, but of two-footed things he saw nothing. He fetched a pail of water for Clarissa and was in the act of entering the house when a gun cracked sharply at some distance on his left. The forest stopped to listen with him for a full moment as the echoes went bounding among the rocks. And then a whirring of wings great and small, hither and yon, announced that there were other vagabonds as startled as he. Two more shots, this time in the distance behind him, followed quickly by a startling noise close at hand.
Clarissa, her whole soul in the note, was incontinently braying.
It was an unearthly sound and an unfamiliar one. For never in the smooth course of their acquaintance had she been guilty of such an indiscretion. He hurried to the shed, but before he reached the door she ceased, and when he entered, regarded him with a wistful eye of recrimination which forestalled his reproaches. After all, she was only an ass! The damage, if damage there was, had already been done. In grave doubt as to his own immediate course, he hurried to the lodge, where he found Hermia sitting wide-eyed upon her couch, fearfully awaiting him.
"What on earth has happened, Philidor?" she asked.
"Oh, nothing," he laughed. "Our host is abroad with a shotgun. Clarissa objects, and is so much of an ass that she can't hold her tongue about it."
She smiled and got to her feet.
"I must have slept—"
"Precisely seven hours. It's half-past nine. We must be off at once—by the back door if there is one—"
"Are they coming this way?"
"I didn't stop to inquire. They're near enough, at any rate."