Page:Cornelia Meigs--The Pool of Stars.djvu/149

. The strokes sounded very thin and far away as the night wind carried them. A faint cow bell jingled in a distant field, a comfortable, friendly sound that Elizabeth missed when it moved and died away. They began to relax their tense muscles as the time passed slowly, to swing their feet and to talk almost above their breath.

"It may not be coming to-night," said David, "we will not wait much longer."

"That man at the Reynolds' gate, I wonder what he wanted," observed Betsey. "It was rather late for just ordinary visitors. Did you notice him, David?"

"When the light fell on him I thought I had seen him before," he answered. "Yet after all it was no one I knew, just a man I saw in the village this morning by the post office."

Elizabeth was not greatly heeding, for the round, golden rim of the moon was showing almost opposite them, above the jagged heaps of ruins. Slowly it rose, spreading more light through the trees, until it was half above the horizon and shone, an orange semicircle, there above the old house. She was about to speak when David touched her elbow.

"Look beyond that pine tree," he whispered.

The little glow-worm light was visible at last. It was, at first, half hidden by the bushes, but it moved slowly along, swinging near the ground,