I went out into the portico, there snuffing the deep, strong breath of the fragrant black earth receiving back into its gaping self what the last few days had taken from it, while quick succeeding thoughts of escape and flight passed across my brain. All through the fiery time we had just had the chance of escaping with the fair booty yonder had been present. Without her, flight would have been easy enough, but that was not worth considering for a moment. With her it was more difficult, yet, as I had watched the wood-men, accustomed to cool forest shades, faint under the fiery glare of the world above, to make a dash for liberty seemed each hour more easy. I had seen the men in the streets drop one by one, and the spears fall from the hands of guards about the pallisades; I had seen messengers who came to and fro collapse before their errands were accomplished, and the forest women, who were Heru's gaolers, groan and drop across the thresholds of her prison, until at length the way was clear--a babe might have taken what he would from that half-scorched town and asked no man's leave.
Yet what did it avail me? Heru was helpless, my own spirit burnt in a nerveless frame, and so we stayed.
But with rain strength came back to both of us. The guards, lying about like black logs, were only slowly re-turning to consciousness; the town still slept, and darkness favoured; before they missed us in the morning light we might be far on the way back to Seth--a dangerous way truly, but we were like to tread a rougher one if we stayed.
In fact, directly my strength returned with the cooler air, I made up my mind to the venture and went to Heru, who by this time was much recovered. To her I whispered my plot, and that gentle lady, as was only natural, trembled at its dangers. But I put it to her that no time could be better than the present: the storm was going over; morning would "line the black mantle of the night with a pink dawn of promise"; before any one stirred we might be far off, shaping a course by our luck and the stars for her kindred, at whose name she sighed. If we stayed, I argued, and the king changed his mind, then death for me, and for Heru the arms of that surly monarch, and all the rest of her life caged in these pallisades amongst the uncouth forms about us.
The lady gave a frightened little shiver at the picture, but after a moment, laying her head upon my shoulder, an-swered, "Oh, my guardian spirit and helper in adversity, I too have thought of tomorrow, and doubt whether that horror, that great swine who has me, will not invent an excuse for keeping me. Therefore, though the forest roads are dread-ful, and Seth very far away, I will come; I give myself into your hands. Do what you will with me.""Then the sooner the better, princess. How soon can you be prepared?"She smiled, and stooping picked up her slippers, saying as she did so, "I am ready!"There were no arrangements to be made. Every instant was of value. So, to be brief, I threw a dark cloak over the damsel's shoulders, for indeed she was clad in little more than her loveliness and the gauziest filaments of a Hither girl's underwear, and hand in hand led her down the log steps, over the splashing, ankle-deep courtyard, and into the shadows of the gateway beyond.
