Part 27 (2/2)

I shook my head and then, remembering that my answer was unintelligible in the darkness, I said, ”I haven't. We fell over a cliff or a precipice, and that's all I can say about it.”

”Why,” she said, ”you're s.h.i.+vering!” And she put out her hand to touch me. Her fingers came to rest on my arm, and I could feel her stiffen in the dark.

”Jim, why did you do it?” she demanded, with yet a curious softness in her voice.

”Do what?” I fenced.

”As if I don't know that you're in your s.h.i.+rt sleeves. That's your coat that's wrapped round me.”

”What if it is?”

”You shouldn't have done it. You'll catch your death of cold.”

”Much chance there is of that,” I grunted.

She was silent for a time, and then I felt her arms about me, and I realised that she was trying to place my coat about my shoulders.

”If that's what you're after,” I said, ”I'll put it on. But you'll catch cold yourself.”

She made no direct answer, but I heard something that sounded curiously like a sob.

Presently she moved up closer to me and a soft voice whispered in my ear, ”Jim, I'll be warmer if you'll let me snuggle up to you. It's a long time since last ... I didn't deserve it then.”

I reached out in the darkness and drew her towards me. With her tired head resting on my shoulder we waited for the dawn.

It was a long time coming, how long I cannot say, for in my then state of nervous tension the hours dragged with the awful unendingness of eternity. At last the black wall of night cracked into streaks of grey, looking for all the world like feeble sun-rays filtering through the c.h.i.n.ks in the roof of a deserted house. Moira stirred a little, and I saw in one hasty glance that her wet hair was streaming about her face and her saturated dress was caked with black mud.

I held her off at arm's length and looked her over quizzically. Then we each laughed outright at the sight the other presented.

”You're wet through, Moira,” I said, ”and you look as if you've been having a mud-bath. All the same you're a brick to have stood it all the way you have.”

”I'm not and I haven't,” she said cryptically, and silenced my further objections with a kiss.

When I looked out on the world again it was to see that the day had already broken, and a dirty and bedraggled Albert c.u.mshaw was making his way towards us with slow and painful steps.

CHAPTER IV.

WE ENTER THE VALLEY.

I cannot explain why just at that instant my heart gave a thump. There was nothing for it to thump about. c.u.mshaw, toiling up the slope, for all his woe-begone look, was the most ordinary figure imaginable, and there was nothing in the landscape to excite or rivet attention. It was a white dawn, and, though the rain had ceased long before, everything was still dull and grey. In the hollows the mist lingered and hung between us and the further view like a great white curtain. That and the advancing Albert c.u.mshaw completed the picture, a picture that was neither interesting nor sensational. Yet at the sight, as I've already stated, my heart jumped queerly and unaccountably. Do coming events really ever cast their shadows before them? Are we sometimes granted visions of ”the things beyond the dome?” I do not know, and, even if I did, I would not care to express a definite opinion in my own case. I have seen things dangerously like coincidences happen so often in my own experience that I have grown chary of either affirming or denying that there is something more than chance at the bottom of it all. Still the fact remains that twice within twenty-four hours the same queer feeling crept over me, and on each occasion the course of events proved that it was premonition. But that is running a shade ahead of the story.

I ran down the slope to meet c.u.mshaw, and the first thing I noticed was that there was a great livid bruise across his right temple.

”You've got a nasty knock there on your forehead,” I greeted him, in the casual self-contained fas.h.i.+on of the men who live in the open.

He answered me with one of those laughs that are nothing more than almost soundless chuckles.

”Is it hurting?” I enquired with a trace of anxiety in my voice.

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