He must have been out nearly an hour, going further and further from home all the time, when, in answer to his call, he fancied he heard a distant reply.
“Paddy!” he shouted again. “Paddy!—Paddy! Are you there?”
He listened with painful intentness, and then with a sudden thrill of almost ungovernable joy, as he heard a faint voice call “Here!” and afterward give the cry they had used when searching for each other since childhood.
“I am coming!” he shouted. “Don’t move!” and he began picking his steps in the direction from whence the voice came.
After great difficulty and many stumbles, he at last found himself in close proximity to the call that sounded from time to time to guide him, and then through the thickness he saw the wood of a little kind of shelter probably used at some time for tethering goats, and a second later he had gripped hold of Paddy herself.
And she made no effort to resist him as, carried away by a rush of feeling, he could not control, he strained her, half-fainting, to his heart.
Paddy trembled violently from weakness. Her cotton blouse was wet through, and she was perished with cold and dread, for she had passed through a terrible time trying to find her way back to the others before she came across the little shelter and sank down worn out. Without quite knowing it, she clung to Lawrence for a few moments, and under the sudden reaction broke down into a few gasping sobs.
He soothed her with the utmost tenderness, and then slipped off his coat and made her put it on, buttoning it up himself. He next arranged a kind of seat for her, where she could lean back against the framework of the hut, and then set to work at once to make a fire, cursing himself inwardly that he had not had the sense to bring a flask of brandy.
Fortunately he had plenty of matches and some old letters, so that, by pulling down pieces of the shelter, he was quickly able to light a comforting fire, and busied himself keeping it going while Paddy had time to recover herself.
When she did so, however, her first impulse was to shrink away, and there was a questioning expression in her eyes as she watched him.