The Forge in the Forest Part 23

"My friends!" she cried, in a shaken voice which faithfully uttered her heart, "my true and loyal friends!" Whereupon she wrung their hands, and wrung them, and would have spoken further but that her voice failed her.

Then, after a moment or two, she turned to me,--yet not wholly.

The paleness had by this well vanished, and her eyes, those great sea-coloured eyes, which she would not lift to mine, were running over with tears. Philip took one st.u.r.dy little arm from her neck, and stretched out his hand to me; but I ignored the invitation.

"And what--what have you got for me, Mizpah?" I asked, in a very low voice, indeed--a voice perhaps not just as steady as that of a noted bush-fighter is supposed to be at a crisis.

The flush grew, deepening down along the clear whiteness of her neck, and she half put out one hand to me.

"Do you want thanks?" she asked softly.

"You _know_ what I want,--what I have wanted above all else in life from the moment my eyes fell upon you!" I cried with a great pa.s.sion, grown suddenly forgetful of Grul and Big Etienne, who doubtless found my emotion more or less interesting.

For a second or two Mizpah made no answer. Then she lifted her face, gave me one swift look straight in the eyes,--a look that told me all I longed to know,--and suddenly, with a little laugh that was mostly a sob, put Philip into my arms.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Suddenly, with a little laugh that was mostly a sob, put Philip into my arms.]

"There!" she whispered, dropping her eyes.

And by some means it so came about that, as I took the child, my arms held Mizpah also.

THE END