Going very softly in my stockinged feet, and careful of my knowledge not to penetrate the thicket until close upon the appointed place, I reached my goal upon the stroke of the hour. “Well!” whispered a voice from the starlight. “I could trust you.” He had been stretched recumbent on the wall top, and now rose cautiously to my view, no longer the whitened fool, but the true Gogo of my affections. I looked up at him as from a well; and he swung his long stilts over, as he sat, so that they rested on the ground beneath. “Quick!” he muttered; “without a moment lost--swarm! I can’t bend.” Heaven knows how I did it--with no better show of grace than Lady Sophia, I fear. But somehow I scrambled up, until he could reach my hands, and haul me with a mighty power beside him. Then, once more, swing went his legs, and there was the ladder for my descent on the other side. I clung to him convulsively; I kissed his hands; I could not refrain from sobbing. “O, Gogo!” I said; “what you have saved me from--O, Gogo, what!” His breath caught like a wounded lion’s. “Not yet,” he whispered. “There is far to go first!” “Put me down, then,” I answered, alert in the stress of things. “No,” he said. “On my back--quick!” “You are going to carry me?” “There are bloodhounds,” he replied. “There must be no tracks but the stilts’--no scent for them to follow.” Then I understood the fulness of his plan; but still I lingered, amazed. “I am not a child. What strength, though yours, could bear me so?” He showed me a long staff that leaned to him against the outer wall. “There is my third prop,” he said. “When I am driven, I can still seat you upon a branch, and save the scent. The ground is iron, and”--he struck his chest--“these ribs. Come, and let me wear my heart upon my sleeve.” The next moment we were off. The great creature swayed beneath me like a tree; but he never staggered or faltered, save periodically to rest himself and me. The sweet night wind blew upon my face, cold and colder. I snuggled from it into the vast nape of his neck, which was like a mat for warmth. I had no idea or care whither he was taking me, and the knowledge only that it was by roads deserted at this silent hour. Still he held on, and, when frost and weariness threatened to numb my brain, could spare a strong hand to imprison both mine lest I fell. And still the flight endured, and I asked, could ask, no question, not even when I grew penetrated by a dull consciousness of ascent--of my comrade straining and toiling beneath me like a stricken Sisyphus--of the groaning of the giant spirit in him who would not be subdued. Then, at last, came a pause, and darkness and release; and I felt myself swung gently down to rest upon a mat of scented leaves, whose warmth and fragrance wooed me to such a sleep as I had never known before. XV. I BECOME AN INMATE OF “RUPERT’S FOLLY”