She turned and clasped her arms around him with a kind of fierceness. “I leave you, David? Oh—ha, ha, ha! Oh, but you must never leave me, my love—love—love! Oh, what should I do if you were to leave me?”
“Hush, girl; hush! you’ll rouse the house, laughing and crying in the same minute! Don’t you know I won’t leave you? There—hush! You’ll wake Gloam else.”
“He loved me, too; he wouldn’t leave me; but he thought I wasn’t old enough—not old enough, ha, ha!... David, does God know about us?”
“Not enough to trouble Him much, I expect,” said the young man, with a short laugh. “If anything knows about us, it’s the old wheel there, waiting like a black devil to carry us off. Come, we must creep back to the house.”
They rose, Swanhilda stood before him, her sweet sad face glimmering shadowy pale through the darkness. “Say, ‘I love you, Swanhilda, and I will never leave you!’” she whispered.
He hesitated, laughed, stroked her hair, and stooping, gazed deep into her eyes, as on the day when they first met. Did his heart falter for a moment, realising how utterly she was his own? “You trusted me just now,” said he; “are you getting suspicious again?”
“No; but I am afraid—always afraid now. When you are not with me, I am afraid of everyone I meet; I think they will see our secret in my eyes. When I lie alone at night I am afraid to pray to God, as I used to do. What is it? Why do I feel so? It must be that we have done some wrong. My poor love! have I made you do any wrong? I would rather be dead.”
“Little darling—no! You couldn’t do wrong if you tried. There is no wrong—I swear there isn’t. Listen, now in your ear: I love you, Swanhilda, and I will never leave you! Satisfied now?”
Low as the words were whispered, they were heard beyond the stars, and stamped themselves upon the eternal records. But their only palpable witness was the mill wheel. A log of wood, carried over the fall, came forcibly in contact with the low-impending rim. It swung the heavy structure partly round upon its axle. And straightway, upon the hollow night, echoed a faint yet appalling sound as of jeering laughter. Slowly it died away, and silence closed in once more, like darkness after a midnight lightning flash. But it vibrated still in the startled hearts of the man and the woman, who crept so stealthily back to the house, and vanished in the blackness of the doorway, and it revisited their unquiet dreams.