The Duke looked out at the moon. It stood high in the heavens, bright and clear, a disk of silver. Behind it the sky was clean and swept, but to the eastward, traveling slowly up, were a company of clouds, one flying like a wild goose behind the other.
"We can cross," he answered, "but not until the moon is hidden. There may be others on the road."
Then he sat down on the dry moss.
Immediately the figure by the tree moved toward him. He noticed that it was but half white, as it stood, and now, as it drew nearer, it became wholly white. The explanation followed, his coat was put around his shoulders. He got up at once.
"No, no," he said, "please keep it on; I am not cold."
"But you are wet," replied Caroline Childers, "and you will be cold." Then she added, as though to settle the discussion, "I put the coat on because the cartridges were in the pocket. I have the rifle."
And she held out the Mannlicher.
The Duke hesitated. Then he put the coat on and took the gun out of her hand. The girl remained where she was standing.
A question came into the man's mouth, but he closed his lips on it, and dropped the butt of the rifle on the moss beside him. A swift comprehensive understanding came to him. A picture arose strikingly before him: the mob arriving on the road, he in the river there, and this white figure, wearing his coat, fighting with a rifle from behind a fir tree, like the first resolute women of this republic, holding the log house against the savage. She had flung the bits of stone into the river to warn him, and had taken up the rifle to defend him.
"Sit down," he said; "we shall doubtless have a long distance to walk."