"I know," he said, looking
straight ahead between her ears; then, after a pause, "it has been a bad
time for you, You are in a bad way altogether. That is why I came."
"But it was for _you!_" I blurted out. "Harry, if only I had known why
_you_ were taken--and what it was to _you!_"
He turned his face to me with the old confident comforting smile.
"Don't you trouble about _that. That's_ nothing to make a fuss about.
Death?" he went on musing--our horses had fallen to a walk again--
"It looks you in the face a moment: you put out your hands: you touch--
and so it is gone. My dear boy, it isn't for us that you need worry."
"For whom, then?"
"Come," said he, and he shook Vivandiere into a canter.
III
I cannot remember precisely at what point in our ride the country had
ceased to be familiar. But by-and-by we were climbing the lower slopes
of a great down which bore no resemblance to the pastoral country around
Sevenhays. We had left the beaten road for short turf--apparently of a
copper-brown hue, but this may have been the effect of the moonlight.
The ground rose steadily, but with an easy inclination, and we climbed
with the wind at our backs; climbed, as it seemed, for an hour, or maybe
two, at a footpace, keeping silence. The happiness of having Harry
beside me took away all desire for speech.
This at least was my state of mind as we mounted the long lower slopes
of the down.
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