Andrew had started out from the hiding tree with the intention of cutting across the trail of the hunters at right angles a little up the ravine, and he had trusted to a six-year-old remembrance of the lay of the land as he led the way across the frosty meadow and up the ridge at a brisk pace.  Caroline swung lithely along beside him and in the matter of fences took Polly’s policy of a hand up and then a high vault, which made for practically no delay.  They skirted the tangle of buck bushes and came out on the edge of the cliff just as the hunt swept by at their feet and on up the creek bed.  They were both breathless and tingling with the exertion of their climb.

“There they go—­left behind—­no catching them!” exclaimed Andrew.  “No possum for you, and this is your hunt!  I’m most awfully sorry!”

“Don’t you suppose they will save me one?” asked Caroline composedly, and as she spoke she walked to the edge of the bluff and looked down into the dark ravine interestedly.

“You don’t want the possum, child, you want to see it caught.  The negroes get the little beasts; it’s the bagging that’s the excitement!” Andrew regarded her with amused interest.

“I don’t seem to care to see things caught,” she answered.  “I’m always sorry for them.  I would let them all go if I got the chance—­all caught things.”  A little crackle in the bushes at her side made her move nearer to him.

“I believe you would—­release any ’caught thing’—­if you could,” he said with a note of bitterness in his voice that she failed to detect.  A cold wind swept across the meadow and he swung around so his broad shoulders screened her from its tingle.  Her eyes gazed out over the valley at their feet.

“This is the edge of the world,” she said softly.  “Do you remember your little verses about the death of the stars?” She turned and raised her eyes to his.  “We are holding a death-watch beside them now as the moon comes up over the ridge there.  When I read the poem I felt breathless to get out somewhere high up and away from things—­and watch.”

“I was ‘high up’ when I wrote them,” answered Andrew with a laugh.  “Look over there on the hill—­see those two old locusts?  They are fern palms and those scrub oaks are palmettos.  The white frost makes the meadow a lagoon and this rock is the pier of my bridge where I came out to watch one night to test the force of a freshet.  Over there the light from Mrs. Matilda’s fires is the construction camp and beyond that hill is my bungalow.  That’s the same old moon that’s rising relentlessly to murder the stars again.  Do you want to stay and watch the tragedy—­or hunt?”

Without a word Caroline sank down on the dried leaves that lay in a drift on the edge of the bluff.  Andrew crouched close beside her to the windward.  And the ruthless old moon that was putting the stars out of business by the second was not in the least abashed to find them gazing at her as she blustered up over the ridge, round and red with exertion.