Tucking a robe around me, the old gentleman nodded to Selwyn.  “Don’t let your wife get cold, suh, and don’t stay out too long.  The sun’s deceiving and it ain’t as warm as it looks.”  Being deaf, he spoke loudly.  “The battlefields are to your left about half a mile from the creek with a water-oak hanging over it, and nigh about two miles from here.  You can’t miss ’em.  Over yonder”—­he pointed to the top of a modest mountain—­“is where we had a signal station during the war.  The view from there can’t be beat this side of heaven.  I ain’t sure the battlements of heaven itself—­”

But our horse had started and Selwyn, looking at me, laughed.  “Battlefields have their interest, but not to-day.  It’s nice, isn’t it, to be—­just by ourselves and all the world away?  Are you all right?  I have orders to keep my wife warm.”

“She’s very warm.  Where are we going?” I turned from Selwyn’s eyes.

“I don’t know.  Don’t care.  It is enough that we are to be together.”

“Wouldn’t you feel better if you said ‘I told you so’?  Any one would want to say it.  It was a pretty long trip to take unnecessarily, and as we haven’t been of service we needn’t have come.  I’m sorry—­”

“I’m not.”  Selwyn, paying no attention to the horse, who had turned into the road leading to the top of the mountain, kept his eyes still on me.  “I don’t deserve what has come of our venture, but I shall enjoy it the more, perhaps, because of undeserving.  It is just ’we two’ to-day.  I get so mortally tired of people—­”

“I don’t.  I like people.  Perhaps if I only knew one sort I would get tired of them.  I used to think my people were those I was born among, but I’m beginning to glimpse a little that my family is much larger than I thought, and that all people are my people.  Still—­” I laughed and drew in a deep breath of pine-scented air.

“Still—?” Selwyn waited.

“It is nice to get away from everybody now and then, and be with just you.  I mean—­” Certainly I had not meant to say what I had said, and, provoked at my thoughtless revealing, at the chance it would give Selwyn to say what I did not want him to say, I stopped abruptly, then quickly spoke again.  “Why don’t you make the horse go faster?  We’ll never get to Signal Hill at this rate.  He’s crawling.”

“What difference does it make whether we get anywhere or not?  I don’t want to get anywhere.  To be going with you is enough.  You are a cruel person, Danny, or you would not make me go so long a way alone.”

“I am not making you go alone.  It is you who are making me.  I am much more alone than you.”  Again I stopped and stared ahead.  What was the matter with me that I should be saying things I must not say?  In the silence of earth and air I wondered if Selwyn could hear the quick, thick beating of my heart.