“Oh, right and wrong are merely terms,” she replied, rising to her feet. “There is no law against being out at night. It isn’t forbidden in the Defence of the Realm Act, is it? If I like to be out at night it is right I should be.”
“I was thinking of the danger, not of the law,” I responded dryly.
“Why, whatever danger can there be?” the girl cried, opening wide her pretty eyes. “There are no highway robbers in Cartordale, nor any Germans.”
But I did not argue with her. I simply handed her the woollen cap which had fallen off when she fainted, then helped her to fasten the cloak around her, and finally led her into the hall, picking up my own hat and coat as I went. I was fully determined on seeing her to her own home, wherever that might be and whatever her objections. I opened the door noiselessly and closed it again with the merest click of the lock.
“It is very dark,” I muttered, being a man of the town and used to gas-lamps.
“Yes, it often is at midnight,” the girl replied demurely, but with a little catch in her voice as if she were choking back a laugh. “But I can see very well. Those who are country-born have eyes in their feet, you know, and never miss the path. Why, there are men of the Dale, and women too, for that matter, who will walk across the moors at dark and never miss the path for all it is no more than three feet wide.”
“But you have lost your way once already to-night,” I murmured.
“That doesn’t affect the question,” she retorted scornfully. “It was only because I was trying a short cut. I left the path of my own accord. If I had kept to the road I should have been home by now. The longest way round is the quickest way home. Is that a proverb? It sounds like one. If it isn’t it should be. It is true, anyway. Besides, it is foggy. That makes a difference. Give me your hand.”
Apparently she did see better than I, for the next minute I felt the grip of her slender fingers as she seized mine and began to pull me forward. We went swiftly and in silence, still hand in hand, for some minutes, then her clasp loosened.
For a moment or two the shadow of her lingered beside me, then suddenly disappeared into the fog. We had reached a part of the Dale that was flanked on one side by a wall of rock which deepened even the blackness of the night and made the darkness, to me, at all events, absolutely impenetrable. There was no sign of light or house, nor indeed of any building, and when I groped my way to the side of the road, I stumbled, first into a ditch and then against a low rubble wall, beyond which was only fog much thicker now than it had been earlier in the evening.