"What is it?"
"Where were you hidden that day my friend Talbot searched for you and I looked on?"
She glanced quickly up into his face, and her lips curved in the slightest smile. There was, too, a faint twinkle in her eye.
"You have asked me for the second time the one question that I cannot answer," she replied. "I am sorry to disappoint you, Captain Prescott, but ask me anything else and I think I can promise a reply. This one is a secret not mine to tell."
Silence fell once more over them and the world about them. There was no noise save the soft crush of the horses' feet in the snow and the crunch of the wagon wheels. The silvery glow of the moon still fell across the hills, and the trees stood motionless like white but kindly sentinels.
Prescott by and by took his flask from his pocket.
"Drink some of this," he said; "you must. The cold is insidious and you should fend it off."
So urged she drank a little, and then Prescott, stopping the horses, climbed back in the wagon-bed.
"It would be strange," he said, "if our good farmer prepared for a twenty-mile drive without taking along something to eat."
"And please see that he is comfortable," she said. "I know these are war times, but we are treating him hardly."