They had stayed their hunger on the rations.  It was bitter cold in the leafy lap of Thusis, but they feared to light a fire that night.

McKay fed and covered the pigeons in their light wicker box which was carried strapped to his mountain pack.

Evelyn Erith fell asleep in her blanket under the dead leaves piled over her by McKay.  After awhile he slept too; but before dawn he awoke, took a flash-light and his pistol and started down the slope for the wood’s edge.

Her sweet, sleepy voice halted him:  “Kay dear?”

“Yes, Yellow-hair.”

“May I go?”

“Don’t you want to sleep?”

“No.”

She sat up under a tumbling shower of silvery dead leaves, shook out her hair, gathered it and twisted it around her brow like a turban.

Then, flashing her own torch, she sprang to her feet and ran lightly down to where the snow brook whirled in mossy pools below.

When she came back he took her cold smooth little hand fresh from icy ablutions:  “We must beat it,” he said; “that auerhahn won’t stay long in his pine-tree after dawn.  Extinguish your torch.”

She obeyed and her warning fingers clasped his more closely as together they descended the path of light traced out before them by his electric torch.

Down, down, down they went under hard-wood and evergreen, across little fissures full of fern, skirting great slabs of rock, making detours where tangles checked progress.

Through tree-tops the sky glittered—­one vast sheet of stars; and in the forest was a pale lustre born of this celestial splendour—­a pallid dimness like that unreal day which reigns in the regions of the dead.

“We might meet the shade of Helen here,” said the girl, “or of Eurydice.  This is a realm of spirits. ...  We may be one with them very soon—­you and I. Do you suppose we shall wander here among these trees as long as time lasts?”

“It’s all right if we’re together, Yellow-hair.”

There was no accent from his fingers clasped in hers; none in hers either.

“I hope we’ll be together, then,” she said.

“Will you search for me, Yellow-hair?”

“Yes.  Will you, Kay?”

“Always.”

“And I—­always—­until I find you or you find me.” ...  Presently she laughed gaily under her breath:  “A solemn bargain, isn’t it?”

“More solemn than marriage.”

“Yes,” said the girl faintly.

Something went crashing off into the woods as they reached the hogback which linked them with the group of pines whither the big game-bird had pitched into cover.  Perhaps it was a roe deer; McKay flashed the direction in vain.

“If it were a Boche?” she whispered.

“No; it sounded like a four-legged beast.  There are chamois and roe deer and big mountain hares along these heights.”

They went on until the hog-back of sheer rock loomed straight ahead, and beyond, against a paling sky, the clump of high pines toward which they were bound.