“Are you awake?” he asked eagerly.
Lee sprang to her feet. “I didn’t know where I was for a minute. Let’s hurry as fast as we can. Memmy will be wild—she might be dreadfully ill with fright——”
“And father’s got all the policemen in town out after me,” said Cecil gloomily. “We can’t hurry or we’ll run into trees; but we can go on.” In a few minutes he exclaimed: “I say! We’re going up hill, and it’s jolly steep too.”
“Well?”
“That Italian didn’t say anything about hills.”
“Then I suppose we’re lost again,” said Lee, with that resignation so exasperating to man.
“Well, if we are I don’t see who’s to help it in the fog at night in a forest. Perhaps the ferry is over the hill, and as this is the only path we’ll have to go on.”
“I wouldn’t mind the hill being perpendicular if memmy was at the top.”
Cecil softened at once. “Don’t you worry; we’ll get there soon. I’ll get behind and push you.”
They toiled and panted up the hill, which grew into a mountain. The forest dropped behind and a low dense shrubbery surrounded them. They were obliged to rest many times, and once they ate a half-dozen crackers Lee found in her pocket and were hungrier thereafter. But they forebore to discourse upon their various afflictions; in fact, they barely spoke at all. Their clothes were torn, their hats lost, their hands and faces scratched. When they paused to rest and the vague disturbances of night smote their ears, they clung together and were glad to hasten on. Lee longed to cry, but panted to be a heroine in Cecil’s eyes, and win the sweets of masculine approval; and Cecil, whose depression was even more profound, never forgot that the glory of the male is to be invincible in the eyes of the female. So did the vanity of sex mitigate the terrors of night and desolation and the things that devour.