Again the wind lulled, and Causleen was aghast to hear the deep, stubborn curses of this man she had sent out to battle. In simple earnest he was fighting the snow-sleep; but in fancy it was Garsykes and its devilry he fought. As he made forward, inch by inch, he cursed Nita Langrish, rained blows again on the three gaunt men who had met him at the pinfold; and Causleen could not remember afterwards how she and Storm got him safely back at last to the hut’s shelter.
They got him back, and for a while he lay in a dazed sleep, past this world’s ken. Then little by little he forced himself—by sheer will to fight on, it seemed—into wakefulness. He glanced at Causleen—at the fire she had replenished—at grey, old Storm, nosing his knee in quiet distress.
“How nightmare plays the devil with a man,” he laughed. “I fancied I was shovelling snow.”
He dozed again, and Causleen watched beside him. She had taunted him; but it seemed there was one man at least in Logie-side. And he might have died while going her errand.
The night wore on. Storm was asleep, too, but she sat wakeful, and listened to the dying tempest. The window of the hut was not blurred by snowflakes now. The wind no longer roared in glee; it wailed and sobbed, like a child left out in the dark. Strange noises sounded out of doors—soft, thick splashings that she knew by and by for melting snow shed by the forest trees—and across the window-space a keen, sharp radiance stole.
Dawn must be here, she thought. Yet anger against him, her fear of gossip, showed unworthy. She was here with the realities of the big, open lands, and she smiled, recalling Hardcastle’s rough “They say is the biggest fool in the Dale.”
She turned to the window again, glad of the moonlight that meant the end of tempest; and, as she sat there, her whole body suddenly grew tense and her eyes wide with terror. She could not cry to Hardcastle for help. Tongue and limbs seemed chained.
Framed by the moonlight, a white, big face looked in at her—a face packed with evil—and then was gone. Hardcastle heard nothing, nor did Storm; but Causleen listened to the slushing scrunch of feet going over melted snow.
That sound ceased, and the door was opened warily till it stood open to the moonlight and the fireglow. And still Causleen could not stir, or cry a warning; and Storm snored on.
It was Hardcastle who woke. With a bound he was up. Murgatroyd, dazed for a moment by the unexpected greeting, turned just in time, and ran, and clashed the door behind him.