“I should think so!”
“Good! then Rex and I and Sepp and the Dachl”—he always would say “Dockles”—“will keep guard outside against any wild cows that may happen to break loose from Nani. Good night, little girl! Sure you’re not too tired?”
Rex stood hesitating in the open door. Ruth went and gave him her hand. He kissed it, and she, meaning to please him with the language she knew he liked best, said, smiling, “Bonne nuit, mon ami!” At the same moment her father passed her, and the two men closed the door and went away together. The last glimmer of dusk was in the room. Ruth had not seen Gethryn’s face.
“Bonne nuit, mon ami!” Those tender, half forgotten—no! never, never forgotten words! Rex threw himself on the hay and lay still, his hands clenched over his breast.
The kindly colonel was sound asleep when Sepp came in with a tired but wagging hound, from heaven knows what scramble among the higher cliffs by starlight. The night air was chilly. Rex called the dog to his side and took him in his arms. “We will keep each other warm,” he said, thinking of the pups. And Zimbach, assenting with sentimental whines, was soon asleep. But Gethryn had not closed his eyes when the Jaeger sprang up as the day broke. A faint gray light came in at the little window. All the dogs were leaping about the room. Sepp gave himself a shake, and his toilet was made.
“Colonel,” said Rex, standing over a bundle of rugs and hay in which no head was visible, “Colonel! Sepp says we must hurry if we want to see a ‘gams.’”
The colonel turned over. What he said was: “Damn the Gomps!” But he thought better of that and stood up, looking cynical.
“Come and have a dip in the spring,” laughed Rex.
When they took their dripping heads out of the wooden trough into which a mountain spring was pouring and running out again, leaving it always full, and gazed at life—between rubs of the hard crash towel—it had assumed a kinder aspect.
Half an hour later, when they all were starting for the top, Ruth let the others pass her, and pausing for a moment with her hand on the lintel, she looked back into the little smoke-blackened hut. The door of the inner room was open. She had dreamed the sweetest dream of her life there.