How common the night was—just like any other night! The clouds, as one looked at them, were seen to swing low, showing lighter and darker spaces. How very short a time can we endure the tensest mood! It is like a branding iron, which though it leaves its mark forever, cannot be borne long. The soul relaxes; the senses reclaim their share of us.
Some men came rather rudely out from under the trees, and loitered near. Perhaps all present, except Cameron, noticed them. Alec did; and felt concerning them, he knew not why, uneasy suspicion. He noticed other things now, although a few minutes before he had been insensible to all about him. He saw that the lady he waited upon had dropped her face into her hands; he saw that her disdainful and independent mood was melted. Strangely enough, his mind wandered back again to her first companion, and he wondered that she had not sent back for him or mourned his absence. He was amazed now at his own assumption that design, not accident, had caused such desertion. He could almost have started in his solicitude, to seek the missing man, such was the rebound of his mind. Yet to all this he only gave vagrant thoughts, such as we give to our fellows in church. The temple of the night had become a holy place, and his heart was heavy—perhaps for his old friend, standing there with uplifted face, perhaps on account of the words he was uttering, perhaps in contrition. In a few minutes he would go forward, and take the old preacher by the arm, and try, as he had once tried before, to lead him to rest and shelter from so vain an intensity of prayer. But just now he would wait to hear the words he said. He could not but wait, for so dull, so silent, did all things remain, that the earnestness of the expectant band made itself felt as an agony of hope waning to despair.
Absorbed in this, Alec heard what came to him as harsh profane speech; and yet it was not this; it was the really modest address of a young man who felt constrained to speak to him.
"I don't know," he said nervously (his accent was American), "who you may be, but I just wish to state that I've a sort of notion one of those fellows right down there means mischief to one of these poor ladies in white, who is his wife. I ain't very powerful myself, but, I take it, you're pretty strong, aren't you?"
Alec gave impatient assent; but the men whom he was asked to watch approached no nearer to the women but remained behind the preacher.
All this time old Cameron prayed on, and while it might be that hope in his followers was failing, in his voice there was increasing gladness and fervour.
The clouds above shifted a little. To those wrapped in true anticipation their shifting was as the first sign of a descending heaven. Somewhere behind the thick clouds there was a crescent moon, and when in the upper region of the sky a rift was made in the deep cloud cover, though she did not shine through, the sky beyond was lit by her light, and the upper edges of cloud were white as snow.
As the well of clear far light was opened to the old man's gaze, his prayer stopped suddenly, and he stood only looking upwards. They did not see so much as know from the manner in which his voice had failed, that for him, at least, there were moments of ecstasy in the assurance of hope.
"Poor fellow!" muttered Alec under his breath, for he felt the poignant disappointment of the awakening.
A sweet sound made some of them turn an instant toward the wood, for a little bird, disturbed in its hiding there, lilted forth a twittering song of joy.