But
Jeanne did not betray herself again. She was quiet while they were
eating, and Philip saw that she was very tired. When they had
finished, they sat for a few minutes watching the lowering flames
of the fire. Darkness had gathered about them. Their faces and the
rock were illumined more and more faintly as the embers died down.
A silence fell upon them. In the banskians close behind them an
owl hooted softly, a cautious, drumming note, as though the night-
bird possessed still a fear of the newly dead day. The brush gave
out sound--voices infinitesimally small, strange quiverings,
rustlings that might have been made by wind, by breath, by
shadows, almost. Overhead the tips of the spruce and tall pines
whispered among themselves, as they never commune by day. Spirits
seemed to move among them, sending down to Jeanne's and Philip's
listening ears a restful, sleepy murmur. Farther back there
sounded a deep sniff, where a moose, traveling the well-worn
trail, stopped in sudden fear and wonder at the strange man-scent
which came to its nostrils. And still farther, from some little
lake nameless and undiscovered in the black depths of the forest
to the south, a great northern loon sent out its cowardly cry of
defiance to all night things, and then plunged deep under water,
as though frightened into the depths by its own mad jargon.
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