Page:Milady at Arms (1937).pdf/72

 tiny star, like faint hope, had crept through a rift in the murky clouds. Soon there was another star and another. Then the moon sailed into glorious freedom, as the two turned their galloping steeds into the Second Road—no longer fittingly named the Dark Lane—and the whole world turned silver-white.

Sally shuddered as she glanced aside into the swamp shadows that even the most brilliant moon ray could not strip of their weird mystery.

"Think ye—think ye—there be quicksand i' there?" stammered Jerry, noticing her sidelong glance.

"I know not, indeed," returned Sally faintly. She looked into Jerry's pale face as he drew abreast her horse, seated upon his own. "Oh, why did ye not stop Mary, an ye saw her going toward the swamp this afternoon?" she reproached him.

"Ye would turn a soldier's duty into that o' a nursemaid!" retorted the other bitterly. But Sally recognized the pain beneath his words. "How knew I she was not allowed across the road?" he groaned after a pause. "Poor little maid! She was but a babe, after all!"

Sally shut her teeth upon the edge of a sob. With work to do this night, she would not yield to weakness, she told herself fiercely. There would be plenty of time for weeping afterward if But her heart shrank away from the hideous possibil-