The Silent Battle

ater. Then he untied the handkerchief from around his neck and washed that, too. When he got back to the fire, he found the girl lying on the couch, her head pillowed on

ngry determination. What the devil had the troubles of this unfortunate female to do with him? What difference did it make to him if her hair and eyes changed color or that she could become grown up or childish at will? Wasn’t one fool who lost himself in the woods enough in all conscience! Besides he had a right to get himself lost if he wanted to. He was his own master and it didn’t matter to any one but himself what became of him. Why couldn’t the little idiot have stayed[26] where she belonged? A woman had no business in the woods, anyway.With his eyes closed it was easy to shut out sight, but the voices of the night persisted. An owl called, and far off in the distance a solitary mournful loon took up the plaint. There were sounds close at hand, too, stealthy footfalls of minute paws, sniffs from the impertinent noses of smaller animals; the downward fluttering of leaves and twigs all magnified a thousandfold, pricked upon the velvety background of the vast silence. He tried to relax his muscles and tipped his head back upon the ground. As he did so his lids flew up like those of a doll laid upon its back. The moon was climbing now, so close to the tree tops that the leaves and branches looked like painted scrolls upon its surface. In the thicket shapes were moving. They were only the tossing shadows from his fire, he knew, but they interested him and he watched them for a long time. It pleased him to think of them as the shadows of lost travelers. He could hear them whispering softly, too, in the intervals between the other sounds, and in the distance, farther even than the call of the whippoorwill, he could hear them singing:à la claire fontaine M’en allant promener J’ai trouvé l’eau si belle Que je m’y suis baigné Il y a longtemps que le t’aime Jamais je ne t’oublierai.The sound of the rapids, too, or was it only the tinkle of the stream?He raised his head and peered around him to right and left. As he did so a voice joined the lesser voices, its[27] suddenness breaking the stillness like the impact of a blow.“Aren’t you asleep?” She lay as he had seen her before, with her cheek pillowed upon her hand, but the firelight danced in her wide-open eyes.“No,” he said, straightening slowly. “I don’t seem to be sleepy.”“Neither am I. Did you hear them—the voices?”“Yes,” in surprise. “Did you? You’re not frightened at all, are you?”“Not at the voices. Other things seem to bother me much more. The little sounds close at hand, I can understand, too. There was a four-legged thing out there where you threw the fish offal a while ago. But you didn’t see him——”“I heard him—but he won’t bother us.”“No. I’m not frightened—not at that.”“At what, then?”“I don’t—I don’t think I really know.”“There’s nothing to be frightened at.”“It—it’s just that I’m frightened at—nothing—nothing at all.”A pause.“I wish you’d go to sleep.”“I suppose I shall after a while.”“How is your foot?”“Oh, better. I’m not conscious of it at all. It isn’t my foot that keeps me awake. It’s the hush of the stillnesses between the other sounds,” she whispered, as though the silence might hear her. “You never get those distinctions sleeping in a tent. I don’t think I’ve ever really known the woods before—or the meaning of silence. The world is poised in space holding its breath on the brink of some awful abyss. So I can’t help holding mine, too.”[28]She sat upright and faced him.“You don’t mind if I talk, do you? I suppose you’ll think I’m very cowardly and foolish, but I want to hear a human voice. It makes things real somehow——”“Of course,” he laughed. He took out his watch and held it toward the fire with a practical air. “Besides it’s only ten o’clock.”“Oh,” she sighed, “I thought it was almost morning.”He silently rose and kicked the fire into a blaze.“It’s too bad you’re so nervous.”“That’s it. I’m glad you called it by a name. I’m glad you looked at your watch and that you kicked the fire. I had almost forgotten that there were such things as watches. I seem to have been poised in space, too, waiting and listening for something—I don’t know what—as though I had asked a great question which must in some way be answered.”Gallatin glanced at her silently, then slowly took out his pipe and tobacco.“Let’s talk,” he said quietly.But instead of taking his old place beside the fire, he sank at the foot of one of the young beech trees that formed a part of the structure of her shelter near the head of her balsam bed.“I know what you mean,” he said soothingly. “I felt it, too. The trouble is—there’s never any answer. They’d like to tell us many things—those people out there,” and he waved his hand. “They’d like to, but they can’t. It’s a pity, isn’t it? The sounds are cheerful, though. They say they’re the voyagers singing as they shoot the rapids.”She watched his face narrowly, not doubtfully as she[29] had done earlier, but eagerly, as though seeking the other half of a thought which conformed to her own.“I’m glad you heard,” she said quickly. “I th