Her sweet, sleepy voice halted him: "Kay dear?"
"Yes, Yellow-hair."
"May I go?"
"Don't you want to sleep?"
"No."
She sat up under a tumbling shower of silvery dead leaves, shook out her hair, gathered it and twisted it around her brow like a turban.
Then, flashing her own torch, she sprang to her feet and ran lightly down to where the snow brook whirled in mossy pools below.
When she came back he took her cold smooth little hand fresh from icy ablutions: "We must beat it," he said; "that auerhahn won't stay long in his pine-tree after dawn. Extinguish your torch."
She obeyed and her warning fingers clasped his more closely as together they descended the path of light traced out before them by his electric torch.
Down, down, down they went under hard-wood and evergreen, across little fissures full of fern, skirting great slabs of rock, making detours where tangles checked progress.