Ian drew his shoulders together.
"Here's a grand place for robbers, wraiths, or dragons!"
"Robbers, wraiths, or dragons, or just quiet dead leaves and
ourselves. Look here--!" He showed a heap of short fagots in a corner.
"I put these here the last time I came." Dragging them into the middle
of the rock chamber, he swept up with them the dead leaves, then took
from a great pouch that he carried on his rambles a box with flint and
steel. He struck a spark upon dry moss and in a moment had a fire. "Is
not that beautiful?"
The smoke mounted to the top of the cavern, curled there or passed out
into the glen through the briers that dropped like a portcullis. The
fagots crackled in the flame, the light danced, the warmth was
pleasant. So was the sense of adventure and of _solitude a deux_. They
stretched themselves beside the flame. Alexander produced from his
pouch four small red-cheeked apples. They ate and talked, with between
their words silences of deep content. They were two comrade hunters of
long ago, cavemen who had dispossessed bear or wolf, who might
presently with a sharpened bone and some red pigment draw bison and
deer in procession upon the cave wall.--They were skin-clad hillmen,
shag-haired, with strange, rude weapons, in hiding here after hard
fighting with a disciplined, conquering foe who had swords and shining
breastplates and crested helmets.
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