Kells suddenly came to her, treading noiselessly, and he leaned over her.  His visage was a dark blur, but the posture of him was that of a wolf about to spring.  Lower he leaned—­slowly—­and yet lower.  Joan saw the heavy gun swing away from his leg; she saw it black and clear against the blaze; a cold, blue light glinted from its handle.  And then Kells was near enough for her to see his face and his eyes that were but shadows of flames.  She gazed up at him steadily, open-eyed, with no fear or shrinking.  His breathing was quick and loud.  He looked down at her for an endless moment, then, straightening his bent form, he resumed his walk to and fro.

After that for Joan time might have consisted of moments or hours, each of which was marked by Kells looming over her.  He appeared to approach her from all sides; he round her wide-eyed, sleepless; his shadowy glance gloated over her lithe, slender shape; and then he strode away into the gloom.  Sometimes she could no longer hear his steps and then she was quiveringly alert, listening, fearful that he might creep upon her like a panther.  At times he kept the camp-fire blazing brightly; at others he let it die down.  And these dark intervals were frightful for her.  The night seemed treacherous, in league with her foe.  It was endless.  She prayed for dawn—­yet with a blank hopelessness for what the day might bring.  Could she hold out through more interminable hours?  Would she not break from sheer strain?  There were moments when she wavered and shook like a leaf in the wind, when the beating of her heart was audible, when a child could have seen her distress.  There were other moments when all was ugly, unreal, impossible like things in a nightmare.  But when Kells was near or approached to look at her, like a cat returned to watch a captive mouse, she was again strong, waiting, with ever a strange and cold sense of the nearness of that swinging gun.  Late in the night she missed him, for how long she had no idea.  She had less trust in his absence than his presence.  The nearer he came to her the stronger she grew and the clearer of purpose.  At last the black void of canon lost its blackness and turned to gray.  Dawn was at hand.  The horrible endless night, in which she had aged from girl to woman, had passed.  Joan had never closed her eyes a single instant.

When day broke she got up.  The long hours in which she had rested motionlessly had left her muscles cramped and dead.  She began to walk off the feeling.  Kells had just stirred from his blanket under the balsam-tree.  His face was dark, haggard, lined.  She saw him go down to the brook and plunge his hands into the water and bathe his face with a kind of fury.  Then he went up to the smoldering fire.  There was a gloom, a somberness, a hardness about him that had not been noticeable the day before.