“I am rested,” she had said, “and your strength is precious. Let the beast bear the burden for which he was born.”
Martin Valliant had to hide the vivid memories of yesterday, but as he stood at Mellis’s side on the edge of the beech2 wood and looked down upon Woodmere, he could but marvel4 at the strangeness of life. Here was he beside her, her comrade in arms, an outlaw5, a man who had thrown the future into the melting-pot of fate. And as he watched a world of tenderness and yearning6 swim into her eyes, his soul stood stoutly7 to its outlawry8. His muscles were made to serve her, and he thanked God for his strength.
“That was our home.”
She looked long at it, her lips trembling, her bosom9 rising and falling with emotion.
“Gilbert will never see it again. We used to draw pictures in France, and in his fancy the apple trees were always pink and white, just as they are now.”
Martin could find no words to utter. He wanted to touch her, to make her feel that he understood.
But she broke loose from these sad thoughts, rallied herself to face the fiercer issue.
“The valley looks empty.”
They scanned it keenly.
“Not a soul.”
“They will not leave us in peace for very long, and the hours will be precious. Come.”
Martin shut his eyes for a moment. He could not forget that vision of her with her dark hair clouding about her body. But the vision was sacred.
“You see, the bridge is broken.”
He had to pretend his innocence10.
“And there is no boat?”
“It is rotting in the mud.”
They went down to the water’s edge, and Martin tied the horse to one of the willows12. He paid homage13 to her forethought in the bringing of those tools.
“We shall have to build a bridge.”
Already she was pushing her way through the scrub, and Martin followed her. There were two gaps to be dealt with, one where the arch had fallen, and a second where the drawbridge should have served.
“The trunks of a few young trees thrown across.”
“Yes—but the horse.”
“We could leave him on this side for the night.”
She stared at the gate-house.
“Perhaps. But we shall want a bridge that can be drawn14 in, to keep out chance visitors. The gate, too, is off its hinges, and broken. I know where a beam is hidden, but I doubt whether we can lift it.”
“There is the rope—and I am strong.”
Her eyes looked him over with critical praise.
“Yes, you are bigger than your father. If we could throw a couple of young ash trees across the first gulf15. There is a thicket16 of ashes down yonder.”
Martin needed no second word from her. He had the tools off the horse’s back, and the ax on his shoulder.
“Which way?”
“Over there. I’ll take the billhook and lop off the boughs17 while you do the felling.”
They started away like a couple of children, full of the adventure, and Martin was soon at work in a thicket of ash trees that had been planted some twenty years before. He chose a tree and had it down with six clean, slanting18 blows of the ax, so that the cuts clove19 wedgewise into the trunk.
“Oh, brave man! That was woodman’s skill.”
She fell to clearing the trunk of its top and side branches while Martin threw a second tree. He felled four, and shouldered them one by one up to the bridge end, and here his great strength served. These ash spars were no broomsticks, and he had to spear them forward over the gap, and keep their ends from dropping into the water.
“Brave comrade! Well done!”
She cheered his triumph.
“And now a few willow11 withies.”
He took the bill, lopped off some willow boughs, and then, straddling his way along the ash trunks, lashed20 them together with the withies. The thing made a very passable bridge. Martin tested it, and was happy.
“A few more trees, and some earth rammed21 on the top, and the horse will be safe across.”
“Yes—to-morrow. It is growing late. Now for the beam I told you of.”
It was lying in the sluice22 ditch under a smother23 of brambles and young thorns, a great balk24 of timber all sodden25 with damp, fifteen feet long, six inches thick, and a foot in breadth. Two men might have shirked carrying it twenty yards; but Martin, in that springtime of his love, dragged it out upon the grass.
“Good saints, but you are strong!”
She tossed him the rope.
“Throw a noose27 around it. I can help at pulling.”
They got the beam to the bridge, across the platform of ash trees, and so to the place where the drawbridge should have been, and here the business baffled them. The thing was far too
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