Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 162.djvu/245

Rh but for saving and earning money; because I need the protection of your heart to keep me from seeking warmth elsewhere; because — because — — "

Some such words as these, burning, passionate, delirious, were rising to Magda's lips in answer to Filip's question about the supper; but another glance at his calm, stolid face checked the impetuous torrent, and with a sort of gasp she said, —

"Because there are hardly any sticks remaining to light the fire, and it went out twice."

"Then go to the forest for firewood to-morrow — you should not have allowed the stock to run so low; and now is the best time for collecting it, as long as the dry weather lasts."

"To the forest? I am to go to the forest alone?" she asked, in a sort of fright.

"Yes, to the forest, of course," he said impatiently. "You are not afraid of wolves in summer, are you? You are to go to the wood to-morrow, and I am going to the town."

That night Magda hardly closed her eyes; her pulses were beating wildly, and her head was throbbing with a dull pain. She still seemed to be breathing in the stifling perfume of the incense and the fiowers, and still to feel Danelo's breath upon her cheek.

She rose at last, and went to the door of the cottage. Everything lay still without in the calm repose of a summer's night. There was no moonlight visible, but the stars gave enough shimmer to distinguish the objects around. No sound was heard save the warning note of the quail calling to her brood among the cornrigs. The whole air was charged with electricity, and there was no freshness even at this midnight hour. The clouds were exchanging fiery secrets, whispering to each other of the storm that was coming, and every now and then a distant flash of lightning showed part of the landscape in broad relief.

The cottage door had creaked in the opening, and Filip, who on warm nights slept in a sackcloth hammock in the workshed, called out to ask who was there.

"It is I," said Magda, standing still. "Why are you not asleep, Filip?" she added timidly.

"I cannot sleep," he answered.

"Neither can I." "I have been wondering and wondering."

"Wondering about what, Filip?"

"Wondering how I am to manage about that cursed key." Magda sighed and went back into the hut. She, too, could not sleep; but neither St. Peter nor his key had anything to do with her wakefulness.

CHAPTER IX. STICK-GATHERING. . It was early in the afternoon when Magda took her way to the forest, accompanied by the little Kuba. Why she had taken the boy with her, contrary to her wont, she could hardly herself have told. The ostensible reason of his being a help in the collecting of firewood was such a very shallow artifice that it could hardly have convinced even herself, for she well knew that once in the forest the boy would probably devote all his energies to the pursuit of some unfortunate bird or squirrel, or the consumption of unripe nuts.

She walked along slowly, her steps lagging more and more as she approached the wood, as though strangely reluctant to enter those shady green arcades, which yet looked so invitingly cool, by contrast with the glaring heat of the field-path she was traversing. The threatened thunder-storm had not yet come to a head, though the thunder still grumbled at intervals, away among the distant hills, like a person with brooding rage in his heart, but whose courage is yet not equal to a direct attack.

When at last Magda set her foot on the moss-grown path of the forest floor, she stopped and peered out furtively through the branches, scanning the road to the village as though she feared to see some one coming from that direction. But there was nothing to be seen stirring far and wide; everybody was busy in the fields on the other side, and the road lay before her eyes in an unbroken stretch of powdery white dust.

Magda drew a long breath, which might have been a sigh either of relief or of disappointment, or which perhaps was merely the effect of having walked uphill in the sun; then she proceeded on her way deep and deeper into the forest, till she came to the place where she knew she would find sticks to collect.

The forest was all filled with beautiful things, and every separate thing had its