Laughing at Gwenny's mighty threat, I showed my finger in the opening; upon which she let me in, and barred the door again like lightning.
'What is the meaning of all this, Gwenny?' I asked, as I slipped about on the floor, for I could not stand there firmly with my great snow-shoes on.
'Maning enough, and bad maning too,' the Cornish girl made answer. Us be shut in here, and starving, and durstn't let anybody in upon us. I wish thou wer't good to ate, young man: I could manage most of thee.'
I was so frightened by her eyes, full of wolfish hunger, that I could only say 'Good God!' having never seen the like before. Then drew I forth a large piece of bread, which I had brought in case of accidents, and placed it in her hands. She leaped at it, as a starving dog leaps at sight of his supper, and she set her teeth in it, and then withheld it from her lips, with something very like an oath at her own vile greediness; and then away round the corner with it, no doubt for her young mistress. I meanwhile was occupied, to the best of my ability, in taking my snow-shoes off, yet wondering much within myself why Lorna did not come to me.
But presently I knew the cause, for Gwenny called me, and I ran, and found my darling quite unable to say so much as, 'John, how are you?' Between the hunger and the cold, and the excitement of my coming, she had fainted away, and lay back on a chair, as white as the snow around us. In betwixt her delicate lips, Gwenny was thrusting with all her strength the hard brown crust of the rye-bread, which she had snatched from me so.
'Get water, or get snow,' I said; 'don't you know what fainting is, you very stupid child?'
'Never heerd on it, in Cornwall,' she answered, trusting still to the bread; 'be un the same as bleeding?'
'It will be directly, if you go on squeezing away with that crust so. Eat a piece: I have got some more. Leave my darling now to me.'
Hearing that I had some more, the starving girl could resist no longer, but tore it in two, and had swallowed half before I had coaxed my Lorna back to sense, and hope, and joy, and love.
'I never expected to see you again. I had made up my mind to die, John; and to die without your knowing it.'