The captain took down his hat from the peg in the hall and rammed it on his head a little more tightly than usual, and opened the cottage door. A drifting spray of rain drove in at them, and the captain threw out a fold of his cloak, like a huge wing, and drew it round the boy. Then they passed out of the cottage together.
Comethup had only a dim remembrance afterward of that walk; of passing people in the streets, and seeing only their feet and ankles; of hearing everything muffled and blurred through the heavy cloak; of catching glimpses of a storm-twisted sky through certain tiny moth-holes and thinnesses of the cloak as it touched his face. Presently the captain threw back an edge of it, and Comethup saw that they were standing before the iron gates.
"Go first," said the captain, in a low voice, "and call to her. Don't frighten her if she is there."
So Comethup stepped softly into the garden, treading cautiously over the wet leaves, and feeling the heavy rain drops from the branches above him tumbling on his hair and shoulders. He called "'Linda! 'Linda!" as he went.
Out of the darkness near the house came the little figure at last, as he had hoped; not joyfully, or with laughter on its lips, but bedraggled, and wet, and trembling, and piteous. She ran to him and caught him eagerly, whispering his name brokenly between her sobs, and hiding her tear-stained face against his childish shoulder. She did not see the captain, who stood with his arms folded beneath his military cloak, looking down at them.
"'Linda, dear," said the boy, "you are all wet. Don't shake so; nothing can hurt you. And here's my friend the captain; he's a soldier, you know, and fights people." This last as a reassurance to the child that she had powerful friends indeed.
The girl looked up at the captain, looked at him for a long moment in silence. Comethup, turning about, saw that the captain had thrown back his cloak and had dropped on one knee, and was holding out his long, thin old arms toward the child; the cloak fell all about him like a tent. She scarcely seemed to hesitate a moment, but went within the shelter of the tent, and was drawn close there, with the captain's head bent above her. Comethup was so surprised that he did not even think how the captain would be spoiling the knee of his trousers in the wet grass.
