I dressed rapidly, my thoughts in a whirl; but I had scarcely slung powder-horn and pouch, and belted in my hunting-shirt, when there came a rapping at the door, and I opened it and stepped out into the dim hallway.
At sight of me she understood, and turned quite white, standing there in her boudoir-robe of China silk, her heavy, burnished hair in two loose braids to her waist.
In silence I lifted her listless hands and kissed the fingers, then the cold wrists and palms. And I saw the faint circlet of the ghost-ring on her bridal finger, and touched it with my lips.
Then, as I stepped past her, she gave a low cry, hiding her face in her hands, and leaned back against the wall, quivering from head to foot.
"Don't go!" she sobbed. "Don't go--don't go!"
And because I durst not, for her own sake, turn or listen, I reeled on, seeing nothing, her faint cry ringing in my ears, until darkness and a cold wind struck me in the face, and I saw horses waiting, black in the starlight, and the gigantic form of a man at their heads, fringed cape blowing in the wind.
"All ready?" I gasped.
"All is ready and the night fine! We ride by Broadalbin, I think.... Whoa! back up! you long-eared ass! D'ye think to smell a Mohawk?... Or is it your comrades on the picket-rope that bedevil you?... Look at the troop-horses, sir, all a-rolling on their backs in the sand, four hoofs waving in the air. It's easier on yon sentry than when they're all a-squealin' and a-bitin'--This way, sir. We swing by the bush and pick up the Iroquois trail 'twixt the Hollow and Mayfield."