"Your people shall be my people," she murmured again. "And your God, my God."
He could only return her pressure in silence.
He would have been little happy if he could have said how much.
Together they peered through the slip of the silken hanging to the rampart below. Flashes of reflections from the end of the Pass played like sheet lightning, and in the fitful illuminations they could see the figure of the old man, Strohmeyer, reclining in the shadow by the postern gate. The drawbridge was still raised, and beyond it they could see in the flashes, the length of the causeway stretching out into the darkness of the mountainside beyond. Strohmeyer did not move. It almost seemed as though he were asleep.
"What makes you think that Herr Windt is here?" asked Marishka suddenly.
"I saw him with Spivak yonder," and he pointed to the north beyond the gorge.
Marishka was silent, her eyes eagerly searching the shadows. Her hand was trembling a little with the excitement of their situation, but her voice was firm as she whispered:
"Perhaps tonight my eyes are uncertain, Hugh. But do you not see something moving in the shadow of the wall?"
"Of the causeway--there, beyond the chain of the drawbridge----"
He peered eagerly in the direction she indicated.
"A shadow----?" he questioned. "I can't--no--yes--it moves--there!"
"Yes--another and still another. And they are carrying something."
Renwick watched again for a tense moment.
"Windt--and his men," he said with conviction. "They are going to try to span the abyss."
Here at least was a community of interest with Goritz. "They will win their way across, unless he wakes," said Renwick tensely.
"Timbers--see! There are at least four men to each. They are putting them in the shadow of the wall. Will the man never wake up?"
"What can we do?" she whispered desperately. "I could call out to him."
"No----" he said, "I don't want to arouse Goritz yet. Ah! They have slunk away again to get more timbers, I think."
"They must not. One man could hold the place indefinitely from the protection of the gate. If the man would only wake!"
"And Goritz?" she said anxiously. "Surely tonight he cannot be sleeping."
"Perhaps he is so sure of himself--yes--in the passage below I heard--there was to be a signal--one stroke of the postern bell----"