“Didn’t a woman have anything to do with—with what you did?”
“A woman! Bless you, no! What made you think that?”
“I don’t know. Please put these things in the barn, and then I’ll show you the road.”
He obeyed and returned to her. She extinguished the lantern.
“He may be awake,” she explained. “He is very restless to-night; and there is no saying what he might do if he saw a lantern wandering about the edge of the woods.”
It was a still, vague night of blurred shadows and warm gloom. The dim stars did no more than mark out the close sky. The girl found a path through the oats and led the way along it until they came to the edge of the forest and the opening of the rough track that wound away from old Gaspard Javet’s clearings to the nearest settlement.
“There has never been a wheel on this end of it,” she said. “We do our hauling in winter; and we don’t pay road-taxes. Grandfather doesn’t seem to mind how far out of the world he lives.”
“Thank Heaven for that!” replied Akerley.
They walked for a short distance along this track, feeling the way with cautious feet and frequently brushing against the dense undergrowth to right and left. She halted suddenly, so close to him that her shoulder touched his arm for a moment.
“Do you think you will be able to find it in the morning?” she asked.