The Colonel's fierce eyes were transfigured with a radiant tenderness, his gruff voice was grown strangely soft and tender, his sinewy hand had sought and found at last those white and trembling fingers, while two soft eyes were looking up into his, eyes made young with love, and bright with happy tears.
Seeing all of which from without the casement, my lady Betty, choking back her own grief, smiled, sobbed and, stealing away, crept softly upstairs to her room, locked herself in and, lying face down upon her bed, wept tears more bitter than any she had ever known.
CHAPTER XL
OF THE ONSET AT THE HAUNTED MILL
A wild, black night full of wind and rain and mud—a raging, tearing wind with rain that hissed in every vicious gust—a wind that roared fiercely in swaying tree-tops and passing, moaned dismally afar; a wind that flapped the sodden skirts of the Major's heavy riding-coat, that whirled the Sergeant's hat away into the blackness and set him cursing in French and Dutch and English.
"What is't, Zeb?" enquired the Major during a momentary lull as they rode knee and knee in the gloom.
"My hat sir ... the wind with a cur——" The words were blown away and the Sergeant, swearing unheard, bent his head to the lashing rain.
"Are we ... right ... think you? ... long way ... very dark egad..."
"Dark sir, never knowed it darker and the rain—may the dev..."