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"Oh, leave your sack." "No," I said, not caring to explain why. In a moment I was in the saddle, as fresh as need be, the cool October night-wind in my face. "Where are we bound?" I asked. "Headquarters. I want you to tell your own news. Hang the man!"
She was just midway between the tents and her stables when she stopped dead, with ears pricked forward. Save for the silvery mane and tail blown by the night-wind she might have been a statue carved out of marble, so still was she. Then she suddenly backed and reared a foot or two, then backed again; wheeled; started towards the tents; stopped and wheeled again.
And as she heard the ceaseless, cruel play of the water amid the dark jungle of ironwork under the pier, and the soft creeping of the foam-curves behind, and the vague stirrings of the night-wind round about these phenomena combined mysteriously with the immensity of the dome above and with the baffling strangeness of the town, and with the grandeur of the beaten woman by her side; and communicated to Hilda a thrill that was divine in its unexampled poignancy.
"Now, while the night-wind loud and chill Unheeded raves around the door, Let us the wine-cup drain and fill, And welcome social joys once more The joys that still remain to cheer The gloomiest month of all the year, By our own fire side. "What need we care for frost and snow? Thus meeting what have we to fear From frost and snow, or winds that blow? Such guests can find no entrance here.
Add to these sombre surroundings the melancholy sighing of the night-wind through the branches of the trees overhead, and the occasional weird cry of some nocturnal bird, and it will not be wondered at if I confess I felt a strong desire to get beyond the precincts of the eerie place with as little delay as possible.
Men in other compartments were swearing and singing, He knew these now for the voices he had heard in his dreams. He tried to force some of the bread down his parched and swollen throat, but failed; the coffee strangled him, and he threw himself upon the bench. The forest again, the night-wind, the whistle of the axe through the air! Once when he opened his eyes he found it dark!
The sigh of the night-wind through the forest came like the lonely moan of a far-distant sea, and I was sleepily half conscious that cedars, pines and cliffs were engaged in a mad race past the sides of the canoe. A bed in which one may not stretch at random is not comfortable. Certainly my cramped limbs must have caused bad dreams.
The ambitious and manifold artificial needs for which men barter their happiness, their sense of humanity, even life itself, seemed beyond belief out there alone with the stars, with the prairie night-wind singing in the ears; seemed so puny that they elicited only a smile.
And the night-wind blew, arising like a ghost, and passed between the tree trunks, and slipped down shimmering glades, and waked the prowling beasts still dreaming of day, and drifted nocturnal birds afield to menace timorous things, and beat the roses of the befriending night, and wafted to the ears of wandering men the sound of a maiden's song, and gave a glamour to the lutanist's tune played in his loneliness on distant hills; and the deep eyes of moths glowed like a galleon's lamps, and they spread their wings and sailed their familiar sea.
I strained my eyes in vain to discover any where, in this great valley, a little church, which, if it only offered me a hard bench for a couch, would at any rate afford me a shelter from the sharp night-wind; for it is really no joke to ride for fifteen hours, with nothing to eat but bread and cheese, and then not even to have the pleasant prospect of a hotel a la villa de Londres or de Paris.
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