It was a great hour for
Moonface, the greatest in her life. Here was her friend and dictator
panting and terrified like some weak, hunted-down thing of the wood. It
was a marvel. At last Lightfoot spoke:
"They are fighting at the foot of the hill!" she said, and Moonface at
once guessed the whole story, for she was not blind, this wide-mouthed
creature.
"Why did you run away?" she asked.
"I ran because I was scared. One of them must be dead before this time. I
am glad I am alive myself," Lightfoot gasped. Then the girl covered her
face with her hands as she recalled Ab's face, distorted by passion and
murderous hate, and Oak's equally maddened look as, before the onrush, he
had grasped her so firmly that the marks of his fingers remained blue upon
her arms and slender waist and neck.
Then Lightfoot, slow to regain her composure, told tremblingly the story
of all that had occurred, finding comfort in the unaffrighted look upon
the face, as well as in the reassuring talk, of her easy-going,
unimaginative and cheerful and faithful companion. She remained as a guest
at the cave overnight and the next forenoon, when she took her way for
home, she was accompanied by Moonface. Gradually, as the hours passed,
Lightfoot regained something of her usual frame of mind and a little of
her ordinary manner of careless light-heartedness, but when home had been
reached and the girls had rested and eaten and she heard Moonface telling
anew for her the story of the flight in the wood, while her father,
Hilltop, and her two strapping brothers listened with interest, but with
no degree of excitement, she felt again the wild alarm and horror and
uncertainty which had affected her when first she fled from what was to
her so dreadful.
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