The moon, within a night of full, had risen above the tree-tops and was whitening our pile of rocks. Fearful of the light now as much as of the grove's darkness, I crouched in the shadow of the rock and washed my hands again and again in the brook, as if by washing them I could cleanse my mind of its dreadful picture of the Frenchman's death.
I could wait no longer for Kit to return, but went groping down the path under the thick summer canopy of leaves which the moonlight could not penetrate, with some idea of warning her, of begging her to run back to Kranichfels, to give herself up again to slavery, to endure anything for the sake of a strong wall between her body and the cruel fangs.
I made slow progress, for in the pitch dark of the wood I was afraid of losing the path, and I blundered continually into the trees; but at length I saw the moon again, and, winking through the leaves, a spark of yellow light which must be from a window of the pavilion. I hid close there, where I could watch a yard or two of moonlit path, and waited.
A long time passed, and though I listened in vain for Kit's footsteps, I slowly took courage from the fact that I heard nothing else. The moon was rising higher and higher, yet no voice but the forest's own spoke to her.
Then I heard a faint clink of steel not very far away down the path, A dead branch cracked and that brief little noise of metal on metal was repeated. I softly called Kit's name and saw a figure step into the patch of moonlight, stand stock-still for a second, then glide into the shadow. I slipped close to her, speaking softly to reassure her. I found her arm, and felt that she was clothed: the soft stuff my hands encountered felt like some thick fine wool, or velvety fur, as short and fine as moleskin. She was laughing softly with excitement and elation, but she would not speak until we reached our rocks again. There she leaned, panting, and put into my hands a small-bladed, sharp spade and a bill-hook.
«It's taken me a long time,» she said. «I'd forgotten where the tool-shed was. I dared not move about much till it was dark, and then the buildings were locked up. But I knew where the Ankleidezimmer was even in the dark–that's where they rig us out in our costumes when we're to be hunted. I knew there were all sorts of things there. It was locked up, but they'd left a window open. I climbed in and got these clothes, and then I found a door into a store was open and I got the tools there–they're new! I couldn't find anything for you to wear, though.»
She laughed again and was so gay and pleased with her success that though I had been about to tell her of what I had found and implore her to go back, my heart failed me. Only when she knelt to drink from the brook and the moonlight fell full on her, I saw that there was such maniacal consistency in every detail of the life Hans von Hackelnberg ordained of his slaves that there was no escaping the trammels of his one mad theme: the clothes were a single suit of overall tights, such as a dancer might wear for practise, fashioned to mould the contours of a human form, yet made of stuff woven with marvelous cunning to simulate an animal's skin. As Kit crouched there on all fours with her head bent low to the water and her face hidden, with the moonlight glinting on that strange, glossy dark coat which clothed her uniformly from head to toe, she looked like a lithe and sleek wild beast that had slipped out from the darkness of the woods to drink. For a second she seemed utterly strange to me, and with a shock of fright I felt the net of sorcery fall round us once again and saw von Hackelnberg's red lips laughing wickedly as he put a term to our brief holiday as human beings.
I seized her and jerked her to her feet, to a human posture, and when I saw my roughness startled her, I could only mumble nervously that her costume seemed so strange.
«I suppose it does, to you,» she said soberly. «I've seen it often enough. It's what the slaves wear in winter: it will keep out the bitterest wind and the snow and rain won't go through it.»
«Let's get away from here,» I said, and picking up the tools I led the way, behind the rocks, away from the open sward and the dark grove of birches beyond it.
It was still not too late to tell her, and I should have told her; I should have told her that my plan was no good, that it was unthinkable than von Hackelnberg would leave us in peace for the weeks that would be necessary to dig a tunnel. But I had fired her with enthusiasm for the plan; not by my words only, but by my very presence and my tenderness I had convinced her that escape was possible: practicable because it was so desired now; and she was so pleased and proud of the way she had carried out her part of it, I had not the heart to break the illusion.
We walked quickly along the moonlit rides, Kit talking rapidly in a low voice all the time, arguing in favour of this or that place that she remembered near the fence, but I was listening with only half my attention. I had to think of another plan, and I could not. Covertly I felt the sharp edge of the spade; the bill-hook was the better weapon, but the spade was heavier. I asked Kit to carry the bill.
We were making for a part of the forest which Kit said was as far from the Schloss as one could get; a wilder tract, less trodden than the rest, where the undergrowth and fallen trees were not cleared away. She had hidden there on a mock deer-hunt and had eluded the hounds and the retrievers for a week. She had learnt to find her way back there in the dark by coming down by night to feeding tables in the more frequented part of the forest. As she recollected, scrub and tall heath in that wild part grew quite close to the fence. That was the place for our tunnel; there we would work by night and hide by day, and to get us food she would improve on her stratagem at Kranichfels and penetrate to the slave-quarters of the Schloss itself. The way to defeat German thoroughness, Kit declared, was to do something boldly absurd: the German boys would never conceive that an Aryan would deliberately impersonate an Under-Race slave.
So, Kit running on with gay confidence and I racking my brains to think of some other expedient, we came at length to some high ground thinly wooded with oaks and deep with bracken and coarse grass. The night was very still and by no means cold. Kit blew out a long breath and loosened her suit at the throat. «Lord!» she exclaimed, «I'm boiled in this thing. I wish I'd...»
She broke off suddenly and seized my arm, and the moon showed me her eyes shining very wide. «Did you hear?» she whispered.
I had heard it. At last, the sound I had been listening for since I found those poor rags of the Frenchman's clothes. Distant, yet very clear in the stillness, the horn had sounded. It came to us across the moonlit woods, a gay and prancing note, a call that on an autumn morning would have set my blood dancing. We stood stock still, listening and listening after it had ceased, not daring to look at each other again. It rang out again, triumphant, exulting, stirring, and there mingled with it now the brief eager baying of hounds that have found their line.