He filled and lit the clay pipe and sat on the top rail of the fence and smoked. Twilight deepened to dusk, the stars appeared, bats flickered and fire-flies blinked their sailing sparks; and lamplight glowed softly from the windows of the house.
It was long past ten o’clock when Catherine made her appearance, carrying a lighted lantern in her left hand and a large bundle under her right arm. She found Akerley on the top rail of the fence. He slid to his feet the moment the swinging circle of light discovered him, and strode forward to meet her.
“I was afraid you were never coming,” he said. “I began to fear that the old man had mistaken you for the devil. What have you there?”
“I thought I’d find you asleep,” she replied. “I didn’t say I was coming back to-night, you know. But I had to. Grandfather is feeling much better and will be up and out bright and early in the morning, so I have had to get these clothes ready for you to-night. And here are an old quilt and things—a frying-pan and old kettle—to make a pack of. You must leave here before sunrise and come back about breakfast-time. I’ll show you the road to come in by now—the road from Boiling Pot.”
“You have been working all evening for me; and I am not accustomed to this sort of thing,” he said. “You are a very wonderful person, Catherine MacKim.”
“What do you mean by wonderful?” she asked curiously.
“You are wonderfully kind. I don’t believe there are many girls in the world who would take the trouble to fit me out like this. I may be wrong, for I don’t know many girls or women.”
“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.