On that she brooded, after starting the little fire. It was not that
she was cold, but the fire, at least, in the heart of the black night,
was a friend incapable of human treachery. She had not been there long
when the tall bay, Wilbur's horse, stiffened, raised his head, arched
his tail, and then whinnied.
She started to her feet, stirred by a thousand fears, and heard, far
away, an answering neigh. At once all thought of shame and of Pierre
le Rouge vanished from her mind, for she remembered the man who had
followed her up the valley of the Old Crow. Perhaps he was coming now
out of the night; perhaps she would even see him.
And the excitement grew in her pulse by pulse, as the excitement grows
in a man waiting for a friend at a station; he sees first the faint
smoke like a cloud on the skyline, and then a black speck beneath the
smoke, and next the engine draws up on him with a humming of the rails
which grows at length to a thunder.
The heart of Mary Brown beat faster, though she could not see, but
only felt the coming of the stranger.
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