CHAPTER XXIV.
ON THE FRONTIER.
The evening train was almost due.
Upon the rise of a bare and windy ridge Rallywood sat on horseback waiting. Man and horse seemed to be the only living things between the horizons. From his point of vantage he looked out over the dim, limitless marshes, north, south and west, and although the growing darkness rendered the few features of the landscape even less distinguishable than usual, his practiced eye passed from point to point readily, for the flat map before him had been etched in upon his memory by the slow-graving stylus of use.
The night promised to be clear and starlit, for the tsa had risen to a gale, and a sudden frost succeeding the thaw had already thrust its iron fingers deep into the land. The cold was intense, and a raw wind, that had blown across a continent and a sea, came down obliquely upon Rallywood through a dip in the mountains. On one side the lines of the railway track ran up a curving incline into the Kofn Hills, where, five miles away at the bleak Frontier station, officials, imposingly uniformed, parade the platforms, examine the baggage, and demand passports in a manner calculated to impress the traveller with an idea of the immense resources of the State of Maäsau. That is one part of their duties. The other is slavish obedience. 'Do what you are ordered, and the result will look after itself.' Such is the creed. The first lesson taught them is that they must not hesitate, and they learn it thoroughly. Westwards the line slipped away into the sweep of low ground towards Alfau, the first stoppage on the way to Révonde.
Rallywood drew his riding-cloak around him and settled down squarely into the saddle. The desolate plains with the crying wind held the loneliness of the damned. Occasionally a wolf howled in the distance, or a wandering snipe cried as it lost itself among the stiffening reeds about the swampy levels, and through all he could hear the hoarse roar of the Kofn in flood, as it rushed down from its rocky bed, swollen with the melted snows of yesterday. Another interval passed while the gray outlook changed to black. Then a red light appeared as it were over the edge of the world. Its coming afforded a certain break in the naked whimpering solitude of the plain.
Slowly it crept down the incline, for the engines of Maäsau, like Belgian pistols, are not made for rough usage. Rallywood rode forward to meet it, the tufts of grass crackling under his horse's feet. But instead of slackening pace the chain of lighted carriages swept past him, and, gathering speed, wound away into the desolate night.
Rallywood looked after it with a sense of blankness. The Chancellor's exordium and the Duke's remarks had rather primed him to a state of expectation, and he felt as if he had been balked of he knew not what. The green light contracted and died away into the gloom; then discontent mastered him. In his restless mood he had grasped at the situation, which had promised a stirring of the blood, but the train passed and thrust him back with a hand that seemed almost palpable in the staleness of ordinary life. When he left the Frontier he had left behind him the old content, the humorous adaptability to circumstances which had once been a main element of his character.
Turning his horse's head due west he rode slowly beside the track, where the metals had begun to gleam under the stars, and the wind drove behind him as if driving him out into the waste. He rode on for five minutes. Then he pulled up and listened. Through the whistling of the tsa and the dull roar of the river, he fancied he had detected some other sound.