To Marco's amazement she got up from her chair and stood before him, showing what a tall old woman she really was. There was a startled, even an agitated, look in her face. And suddenly she actually made a sort of curtsey to him--bending her knee as peasants do when they pass a shrine.
“It is that!'' she said again. “And yet they dare let you go on a journey like this! That speaks for your courage and for theirs.''
But Marco did not know what she meant. Her strange obeisance made him feel awkward. He stood up because his training had told him that when a woman stands a man also rises.
“The name speaks for the courage,'' he said, “because it is my father's.''
She watched him almost anxiously.
“You do not even know!'' she breathed--and it was an exclamation and not a question.
“I know what I have been told to do,'' he answered. “I do not ask anything else.''
“Who is that?'' she asked, pointing to The Rat.
“He is the friend my father sent with me,'' said Marco smiling.
“He called him my aide-de-camp. It was a sort of joke because we had played soldiers together.''
It seemed as if she were obliged to collect her thoughts. She stood with her hand at her mouth, looking down at the earth floor.
“God guard you!'' she said at last. “You are very--very young!''
“But all his years,'' The Rat broke in, “he has been in training for just this thing. He did not know it was training, but it was. A soldier who had been trained for thirteen years would know his work.''
He was so eager that he forgot she could not understand English.
Marco translated what he said into German and added: “What he says is true.''
She nodded her head, still with questioning and anxious eyes.
“Yes. Yes,'' she muttered. “But you are very young.'' Then she asked in a hesitating way:
“Will you not sit down until I do?''
“No,'' answered Marco. “I would not sit while my mother or grandmother stood.''
“Then I must sit--and forget,'' she said.
She passed her hand over her face as though she were sweeping away the sudden puzzled trouble in her expression. Then she sat down, as if she had obliged herself to become again the old peasant she had been when they entered.
“All the way up the mountain you wondered why an old woman should be given the Sign,'' she said. “You asked each other how she could be of use.''
Neither Marco nor The Rat said anything.
“When I was young and fresh,'' she went on. “I went to a castle over the frontier to be foster-mother to a child who was born a great noble--one who was near the throne. He loved me and I loved him. He was a strong child and he grew up a great hunter and climber. When he was not ten years old, my man taught him to climb. He always loved these mountains better than his own. He comes to see me as if he were only a young mountaineer. He sleeps in the room there,'' with a gesture over her shoulder into the darkness. “He has great power and, if he chooses to do a thing, he will do it--just as he will attack the biggest bear or climb the most dangerous peak. He is one who can bring things about. It is very safe to talk in this room.''
Then all was quite clear. Marco and The Rat understood.
No more was said about the Sign. It had been given and that was enough. The old woman told them that they must sleep in one of her bedrooms. The next morning one of her neighbors was going down to the valley with a cart and he would help them on their way. The Rat knew that she was thinking of his crutches and he became restless.
“Tell her,'' he said to Marco, “how I have trained myself until I can do what any one else can. And tell her I am growing stronger every day. Tell her I'll show her what I can do. Your father wouldn't have let me come as your aide if I hadn't proved to him that I wasn't a cripple. Tell her. She thinks I'm no use.''
Marco explained and the old woman listened attentively. When The Rat got up and swung himself about up and down the steep path near her house she seemed relieved. His extraordinary dexterity and firm swiftness evidently amazed her and gave her a confidence she had not felt at first.
“If he has taught himself to be like that just for love of your father, he will go to the end,'' she said. “It is more than one could believe, that a pair of crutches could do such things.''
The Rat was pacified and could afterwards give himself up to watching her as closely as he wished to. He was soon “working out'' certain things in his mind. What he watched was her way of watching Marco. It was as if she were fascinated and could not keep her eyes from him. She told them stories about the mountains and the strangers who came to climb with guides or to hunt. She told them about the storms, which sometimes seemed about to put an end to the little world among the crags. She described the winter when the snow buried them and the strong ones were forced to dig out the weak and some lived for days under the masses of soft whiteness, glad to keep their cows or goats in their rooms that they might share the warmth of their bodies. The villages were forced to be good neighbors to each other, for the man who was not ready to dig out a hidden chimney or buried door to-day might be left to freeze and starve in his snow tomb next week. Through the worst part of the winter no creature from the world below could make way to them to find out whether they were all dead or alive.
