'Always, my dear friend, by very many turnings—but always.'
CHAPTER XX.
UNDER THE PINES.
It was a day that would be dark an hour before its time. Rallywood rode out under the gate of the Castle of Sagan as the last trooper clattered down the rocky roadway in the rear of the Duke's carriage, for upon the arrival of the squadron from Révonde he had received orders to remain behind, the search for Colendorp having so far proved unsuccessful.
Rallywood rode slowly down the shoulder of the mountain spur. Under the gray light of the afternoon the limitless swamps stretching to the skyline looked cold and naked under their drifted snow. From the sky big with storm overhead, to the scanty grass that showed by the wayside blackened by the rigours of the winter, the whole aspect of the frontier was ominous and forbidding. Before he plunged into the lower ravines Rallywood turned to look back at the angry towers of Sagan. He was thinking of Colendorp. Under their shadow that lonely and reckless life had come to its close. Why or by whose hand might never be made clear, but Rallywood's mind had worked down to the conviction that the Count might be able to tell the story.
Well, it was good to know that Colendorp had not died in vain; indirectly but none the less surely his death had brought about the defeat of Sagan's plot.
Then he rode away into the heart of the winter woods, where the branches groaned and thrashed under the driving wind. Through gloomy and pine-choked gorges he wound his way to the riverside, for he had decided that if Colendorp had met his death in the river, his body would in time be beached near Kofn Ford.
The sodden dreary paths beside the river, familiar as they were to Rallywood, now looked strange to him. He seemed to be revisiting them after a long absence. Had they worn the same menace in the past? How had he endured to ride for those six heavy years under the hills and up and down through the marshes by the black river, one day like the last, without a purpose or an interest beyond the action of the hour? He lifted his head to the gathering storm, thanking Heaven that phase of life, or rather that long stagnation, could never come again!
The horrible emptiness of the place appalled him. Only a few block-houses dotted the miles of waste. In summer, when the pools yellowed over with flowering plants, rare wood-pigeons eked out a scanty subsistence in the thickets, and there was little else the seasons round. Only the patrols, and the trains and the smugglers, with a boar or two in the forests beside the Kofn, and the ragged wolf-packs that go howling by the guard-houses at the first powdering of snow. From the past his mind naturally ran on to thoughts of Valerie—thoughts that were hopeless and happy at the same time. He could never win her, yet those few dim moments in the corridor were his own, and whatever the future brought to her, would she ever quite forget them?