HE had called her by her own name--and she had heard.
For a second she halted, glancing back with frightened eyes. Then, with
a brief cry of despair, the girl swerved aside and dived in swiftly
among the shadows of the trees.
But the young man saw the sudden movement and cried out to her
passionately--
"Not that way, my love! Not that way! It's the Wood of the Dead!"
She threw a laughing glance over her shoulder at him, and the wind
caught her hair and drew it out in a brown cloud under the sun. But the
next minute she was close beside me, lying on the breast of my
companion, and I was certain I heard the words repeatedly uttered with
many sighs: "Father, you called, and I have come. And I come willingly,
for I am very, very tired."
At any rate, so the words sounded to me, and mingled with them I seemed
to catch the answer in that deep, thrilling whisper I already knew: "And
you shall sleep, my child, sleep for a long, long time, until it is time
for you to begin the journey again."
In that brief second of time I had recognised the face and voice of the
inn-keeper's daughter, but the next minute a dreadful wail broke from
the lips of the young man, and the sky grew suddenly as dark as night,
the wind rose and began to toss the branches about us, and the whole
scene was swallowed up in a wave of utter blackness.
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