He did not have the temerity to hope that her
courage would be equal to the great sacrifice which the
acknowledgment of her love for one not of noble blood must entail;
but he could not believe that she would cease to love him when she
learned the truth.
So the future looked black and cheerless to Barney Custer as he
trudged along the rocky, moonlit way. The only bright spot was the
realization that for a while at least he might be serving the one
woman in all the world.
All the balance of the long night the young man traversed valley and
mountain, holding due south in the direction he supposed the Old
Forest to lie. He passed many a little farm tucked away in the
hollow of a hillside, and quaint hamlets, and now and then the ruins
of an ancient feudal stronghold, but no great forest of black oaks
loomed before him to apprise him of the nearness of his goal, nor
did he dare to ask the correct route at any of the homes he passed.
His fatal likeness to the description of the mad king of Lutha
warned him from intercourse with the men of Lutha until he might
know which were friends and which enemies of the hapless monarch.
Dawn found him still upon his way, but with the determination fully
crystallized to hail the first man he met and ask the way to Tann.
He still avoided the main traveled roads, but from time to time he
paralleled them close enough that he might have ample opportunity to
hail the first passerby.
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