Hetty said nothing but turned from him and looked out of the little window. A young trooper was leaning over the rude balustrade of the veranda, and beyond him the sombre pines rolled down the darkening valley. Night had not quite fallen yet, though a half-moon that showed red and frosty was growing brighter above the white shoulder of a hill. Another trooper was apparently busy in the adjoining room, for they could hear his footsteps as he moved, but that was the only sound. Then a face rose suddenly into sight above the floor of the veranda where the trooper could not see it. It was a horrible, grey face, and Hetty shrank back, while her chair grated harshly on the floor. In another moment Tom Leger's hand closed tightly on her arm.
"Keep still!" he said. "It's a masked man. I fancy the boys have come for us."
Hetty looked again, and saw that a strip of deer-hide with holes cut in it was tied across the face. Then she became sensible that there was something suggestively familiar in the attitude of the man who, moving noiselessly, raised himself erect and stood watching the trooper, whose back was towards him.
"Oh," she gasped, "it's Walter!"
"Be quiet!" said Leger, and the grasp upon her arm grew tighter.
Another face appeared between the rails, but the first man had already swung one leg over them, and in another moment he sprang forward along the veranda. The trooper heard him and swung round, but even as he did so the newcomer flung his arms about him and they reeled together down the little stairway. Then the second trooper flung open the door, but as he ran out of it two or three men who had apparently crept into the veranda grappled with him, and Hetty could hear them tumbling up and down the adjoining room. Then there was a brief silence until somebody burst open the door of the room in which she was shut. A masked man who strode in grasped her shoulder, and she struggled vainly as he drew her towards the door.
"I won't go. It will only get you into worse trouble," she said.
The man laughed. "If I had to face it all my life, do you think I would leave you here?"
Hetty recognized the tension in his voice, and something that seemed to answer it thrilled in her; but she still protested, and the man, who flung an arm about her waist, swung her off her feet. He did not let her go until he set her down, flushed and gasping, among the pines outside.
Then she laughed. "I'm not sure you could have done that in England, Walter."