Gently I drew the points, closing the cape around her slender throat, knotted the laces, smoothed out the thrums, took her small hands and laid them on my breast.
One by one the stately Indians came to make their homage, bending their war-crests proudly and placing her hands upon their painted breasts. Then they went away in silence, each to his proper post, no doubt. Yet, to be certain, I desired to make my rounds, and bade Lois await me there. But I had not proceeded three paces when lo! Of a sudden she was at my side, laughing her soft defiance at me in the darkness.
"No orders do I take save what I give myself," she said. "Which is no mutiny, Euan, and no insubordination either, seeing that you and I are one—or are like to be when the brigade chaplain passes—if the Tories meddle not with his honest scalp! Come! Honest Euan, shall we make our rounds together? Or must I go alone?"
And she linked her arm in mine and put one foot forward, looking up at me with all the light mischief of the very boy she seemed in her soft rifle-dress and leggins, and the bright hair crisply curling 'round her moleskin cap.
"Have a care of the trees, then, little minx," I said.
"Pooh! Can you not see in the dark?"
"Can you?"
"Surely. When you and I went to the Spring Waiontha, I needed not your lantern light to guide me."
"I see not well by night," I admitted.
"You do see well by night—through my two eyes! Are we not one? How often must I repeat it that you and I are one! One! One! O Loskiel—stealer of hearts, if you could only know how often on my knees I am before you—how truly I adore, how humbly, scarcely daring to believe my heart that tells me such a tale of magic and enchantment—after these barren, loveless years. Mark! Yonder stands the Grey-Feather! Is that his post?"