The door stood half-open. Sometimes the foresters locked it, but oftener not; and Hardcastle took it for a good omen that it was ajar to-day. There would be no need to set a shoulder to it and break it inward. There was a ready welcome for them here.
So he thought, till he pushed the door wide-open, and was challenged roughly. As he had battled to win free of tempest, it seemed he would have to fight for this shelter of the hut. He put Donald’s girl still further behind him and took a pace or two indoors.
“Down, you brute,” he said. “Down, I tell you.”
Then Hardcastle, to his amazement, heard the savage growling cease, and felt a rough snout pushed into his hand; and presently he came from the dimness of the hut into the grey gloom of the space that had snow overhead, and snow to left and right. He held Storm by the collar, because he knew his ways were sharp with strangers nowadays.
“We’ve the sheep-stealer safe. What shall we do with him?” he asked with grim banter.
Storm strained at his collar—to be at Causleen’s throat, he fancied, until the girl ran forward, and took the great, rough muzzle into her hands, and kissed him with frank abandonment. The dog licked her face, and after that licked Hardcastle’s. And the wind roared overhead; and here, on the lee side of the hut, was sanctuary for these three.
“To kiss a dog with his reputation up and down Logie-side,” said Hardcastle, and laughed.
Causleen had not known that he could laugh in this easy, heart-free way. Till now he had seemed austere as destiny—relentless as the driven snow they sheltered from.
“It’s not for the first time—is it, Storm?” she said.
Hardcastle, when they got indoors, knew his way about the hut—knew where to find the candles, the fuel, the demijohn of rum, hidden snugly under the slab that fronted the rough fireplace built of stone. A great blaze of wood and fir-cones was roaring up the chimney soon, and Causleen thanked him for it. Their journey up the pasture had been short in time, but long in suffering, and she was sick with cold.