XIX

UNDER THE HUNTER’S MOON

It was not very dark, and all the cleared country rolling widely away from Cedar House could be dimly seen.  A gusty wind was driving wild clouds across the stars, and tall cloud mountains rose on the north covering the great comet; but higher in the dark blue dome of the firmament the Hunter’s Moon swung full and free, casting its wonderful crystalline light over the darkened earth.

This most marvellous of crystal lamps always appears to be shining by its own living radiance, and never to be beaming by the merely reflected glory that gilds the lifeless Harvest Moon.  The Hunter’s Moon has indeed no rival among all the lights which heaven lends to the world of night.  It is the whitest, the brightest, the most sparkling that ever falls on the darkness, and it was in truth the hunter’s very own.  By its light he could see how to go on with his hunt hours after the close of the short November days, and far into the long November nights, and still find his way home through the deep heart of the mighty wood.

So that even on this dreary November night, when its clearness was dimmed by the flight of the wind-hunted clouds, it was able to lighten in a measure the furthest and darkest reaches of this wild new world.  It touched the mystery of the burial mound; it lifted the misty winding sheet spread by the swamp; it raised the pall laid along the horizon by the sable tops of the cypress trees; it reached almost to the darkness hanging over Duff’s Fort—­that awful and mysterious blackness—­which the noonday sun could never wholly remove.

But the girl’s gaze was not following the moonbeams.  Looking neither to the one side nor the other, she gave a single glance ahead.  This was only to see that she was going straight toward Anvil Rock by the shortest road.  And the one look was enough for she knew that the great shadowy mass glooming in the dark distance must be what she sought.  And then bending forward and low over the pony’s neck, she sent him onward by an unconscious movement of her own body.  She had known how to ride almost as long as she had known how to walk—­the one was an easy and as natural as the other.  Instinctively she now bent still lower, and still farther forward over the pony’s neck, as a boy does in riding a race; for she also was riding a great race, and for the greatest of stakes.  She did not stop to think how great the stake was; she had not yet realized that it was the life of the man she loved; she had not yet had time to face the truth, and to know that she loved Paul Colbert.  She only realized that she must reach Anvil Rock before Philip Alston could pass it on his way to Cedar House, or turn into another path.  Raising her head, she flashed another look into the dark distance, where the goal was and grew sick with fear, seeing how far off it was.  And then rallying, she began to use her voice as well as the reins, to urge the pony to greater speed.