In Secret

Neither she nor McKay had spoken. The latter stood staring down at the patch of ferns into which the cage had rolled. And it was some time before his dulled eyes noticed that there was grass growing there, too--swale grass, which he had not before seen in this arid eastern region.

When finally he realised what it might signify he stood staring; a vague throb of hope stirred the thin blood in his sunken cheeks. But he dared not say that he hoped; he merely turned northward in silence and moved into the swale grass. And his slim comrade followed.

Half an hour later he waited for the girl to come up along side of him. "Yellow-hair," he said, "this is swale or marsh-grass we are following. And little wild creatures have made a runway through it... as though there were--a drinking-place--somewhere--"

He forced himself to look up at her--at her dry, blood-blackened lips: "Lean on me," he whispered, and threw his arm around her.

And so, slowly, together, they came through the swale to a living spring.

A dead roe-deer lay there--stiffened into an indescribable attitude of agony where it had fallen writhing in the swale; and its terrible convulsions had torn up and flattened the grass and ferns around it.

And, as they gazed at this pitiable dead thing, something else stirred on the edge of the pool--a dark, slim bird, that strove to move at the water's edge, struggled feebly, then fell over and lay a crumpled mound of feathers.

"Oh God!" whispered the girl, "there are dead birds lying everywhere at the water's edge! And little furry creatures--dead--all dead at the water's edge!"

There was a flicker of brown wings: a bird alighted at the pool, peered fearlessly right and left, drank, bent its head to drink again, fell forward twitching and lay there beating the grass with feeble wings.

After a moment only one wing quivered. Then the little bird lay still.

Perhaps an ancient and tragic instinct possessed these two--for as a wild thing, mortally hurt, wanders away through solitude to find a spot in which to die, so these two moved slowly away together into the twilight of the trees, unconscious, perhaps, what they were seeking, but driven into aimless motion toward that appointed place.

And somehow it is given to the stricken to recognise the ghostly spot when they draw near it and their appointed hour approaches.

There was a fallen tree--not long fallen--which in its earthward crash had hit another smaller tree, partly uprooting the latter so that it leaned at a perilous angle over a dry gully below.

Here dead leaves had drifted deep. And here these two came, and crept in among the withered branches and lay down among the fallen leaves. For a long while they lay motionless. Then she moved, turned over, and slipped into his arms.