“They will all be drunk as swine,” she said, “and a drunken man is no bargain. Out with your knife, Black Cat, and run and cut some of that furze yonder. Some lazy soul has left faggots in that ditch.”

 

Marpasse made Denise sit down under the shelter of the bank, for the grey sister’s feet had hurt her through the last two miles. So Denise sat there in the dusk, lost in a kind of vacant wonder at life, and at herself, and at the strange way that things happened. She felt tired, even to stupidity, and the sounds that came up out of the town were not more audible than the roar of a distant mill.

 

Marpasse and Isoult made the fire, Isoult using the flint, steel and tinder they carried with them, Marpasse playing the part of bellows². The fire proved sulky, perhaps because of Isoult’s temper, and her muttering of curses. Marpasse knelt and blew till her brown cheeks were like bladders. The flames seemed pleased by her good-natured, strenuous³ face, for they shot up, and began to lick the wood.

 

Marpasse sat back suddenly on her heels, her face very red, and shading her eyes with her hand, she looked out into the darkness.

 

“Poof, is it the blood in my ears, or do I hear something?”

 

Isoult was also on the alert, her eyes bright under a frowning forehead.

 

“Horses,” she said.

 

“What are they doing this time of the night?”

 

From somewhere came the dull thunder of many horses at the trot⁴. Nothing was distinguishable but the fires that had been lit here and there about the town, fires that shone like golden nails on the sable⁵ escutcheon of the night. Isoult, who was very quick of hearing, swore that more than a thousand horses must be moving yonder in the darkness.

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