master of Tralee, who, he knew, would challenge them with ugly
accusations. He must be able to look old Mazarine fearlessly in the
face; he would not be the slave of opportunity. He was going to fight
clean. She was here beside him in the warm loneliness of the northern
world, and he was full-grown in body and brain, with all the human
emotions alive in him; yet he would fight clean.

Not for a half-hour, but for nearly an hour he told her what she wished
to know, while she listened in a happy dream; and when at last she lay
down, she refused his coverlet of dry grass, saying that she was quite
warm. She declared that she did not even need the coat he had taken from
the saddle of the dead horse, but he wrapped it around her, and, saying
"Goodnight" almost brusquely, marched away in the light of the dying
moon.

The night wore on. At first Louise's ears were sensitive to every sound,
and there were stirrings in the hillock by which she slept, but she
comforted herself with the thought that they were the stirrings of
lonely little waifs of nature like herself. Though she dared not let the
thought take form, yet she feared, too, the sound of human footsteps. By
and by, however, in the sweet quiet of the night and the somnolent light
of the moon, sleep captured her. When at last Orlando's footsteps did
crush the dry grass, the sound failed to reach her ears, for it was then
not very far from daylight, and she had slept for several hours. Sleep
had not touched Orlando's eyes when, sitting down by the stones which
were to mark his resting-place, he waited for Louise to wake.