“Is Isaac alive?” she asked, putting her hair back from her forehead.
“I do not know,” he answered.
“If he should guess!”
“No one shall ever know that you fired the shot that killed your husband.”
Bess questioned him with her eyes.
“Should the law ever snatch at us,” he continued, “I shall swear that it was I who shot Dan Grimshaw.”
“You would swear that?” she asked, her whole face aglow.
“I would.”
“Ah—I should love you better than to suffer that.”
They rode on awhile in silence under the trees, the dark figures of the troopers moving vaguely before them, the stars above like silver bosses set in the vaultings of the forest. Often their eyes met; the girl’s white face seemed to shine with an inward light through the darkness of the woods.