Then followed pages describing her life in the cave—and of night journeys through the woods when her mate would delight himself in voicing wild cries—sounds which she came to love. Wildly she rejoiced with him, and laughed as she thought of the terror these resounding cries brought to the simple folk in the valley below them.
Strangest of all, she thought, was his understanding of her slightest wish without the medium of words.
On one occasion she was trying to arrange her long hair, but the hairpins she had brought to the cave had, one by one, been lost. It was impossible to arrange the hair with none, and she had been vexed. That very night he brought her some hairpins and two side-combs. The latter she recognized—they belonged to Lucy Duval! Again she wondered how he had obtained them; and laughed as she considered Lucy’s probable fright.
Another time she had shivered with the cold, for the cave had been damp—the next night he brought clothing, and several woolen blankets.
Whatever he might be to others, he was her chosen man. He could not live her kind of life—gladly she would live his.
Then came an entry on the very last page.
“The storm! How it has rained, and rained, until somewhere the flood has changed the course of some small stream, and now we are imprisoned—the water has risen to the roof of the cave, and we can no longer leave it in the boat. The flood came quite suddenly, last night, while we slept.
“Perhaps it may subside in time—but probably it will not. I shall write no more. Good-bye, little book, and good-bye to all—everything! In dying I can reflect that at least I have lived. So very many never do!”
I closed the book. At last my strong desire to know had been gratified. In the yellowed manuscript which I held in my hand was inscribed the last chapter in the mystery of The Thunder Voice.