The night was sombrous and the rain had been falling for an hour. The girl sat beneath the shelter of her projecting eave upon the ground, where she might look out up the stream, her chin on her knees, her hands clasped about her ankles, watching the rain drops fall glistening into the circle of firelight and hiss spitefully among the fretting flames. She had been crying again and her eyes were dark with apprehension. Her hair hung in moist wisps about her brow and temples and her lips were drawn in plaintive lines. She listened intently. A dead branch in the distance cracked and fell. She started up and peered out for the hundredth time in the direction from which she might expect his approach. Only the soft patter of the rain on the soaked foliage and the ominous blackness of before! She went out into the wet, heaping more logs upon the flames. The fire at least must be kept burning. He had asked that of her. That was her duty and she did it unquestioning like the solitary cliff-woman, awaiting in anxious expectation the return of her lord. She would not lie down upon her balsam bed; for that would mean that she denied the belief that he would return, and so she sat, her forehead now bent upon her knees, her eyes closed, only her ears acutely alive to the slightest distant sounds.
Suddenly she raised her head, her eyes alight. She heard sounds now, human sounds, the crunch of footfalls in the moist earth, the snapping of fallen twigs. She ran out into the rain and called joyously. A voice answered. She ran forward to meet him. He emerged into the light striding heavily, bent forward under the weight of something he was carrying.
“Oh, I’m so glad,” she cried, her voice trembling. “I had begun to fear—I don’t know what. I thought—you—you—weren’t coming back.”
He grinned wearily. “I believe I’d almost begun to think so myself. Phew! But the thing is heavy!”
He lowered it from his shoulders and threw it heavily near the fire.
“W—what is it?” she asked timidly.
“A deer. I shot it,” he said laconically.
He straightened slowly, getting the kinks out of his muscles with an effort; and she saw that his face was streaked with grime and sweat and that his body in the firelight was streaming with moisture. His eyes peered darkly from deep caverns.
“Oh! You’re so tired,” she cried. “Sit down by the fire at once, while I cook your supper.” And, as he made no move to obey her, she seized him by the arms and led him into the shelter of the hut and pushed him gently down upon the couch. “You’re not to bother about anything,” she went on in a businesslike way. “I’ll have you something hot in a jiffy. I’m so—so sorry for you.”