Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/88

 She gave him a deliberate glance from her dark eyes, and then threw back her head and laughed. He could see the heaving of her breast. She laughed again—a fresh, merry laugh—and then he tried to laugh too, thinking of the foolish thing he had said.

"But if there are plenty of girls up there," she said, slyly glancing under her long lashes, "and they're so very wonderful, maybe you'll be getting married before you come home again?"

"Maybe so," he said quietly, and looked vacantly aside.

There was a pause. Then a sharp snap or two broke the silence and recalled him to the maiden by his side. She was only breaking up the twig she had carried. There was another pause, in which he could hear the rippling of the river and the leaping of a fish. The heifers were munching the grass by the roadside a little ahead.

"I must go now," she said coldly, "or they'll be out seeking me."

"I'll walk with you as far as Lague—it's dark," he said.

"No, no, you must not!" she cried, and fumbling the loose fold about her throat, she turned to go.

But he laid hold of her arm.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Only think of my brothers. Your very life would be in danger."

"If all six of them were ranged across the other end of this bridge, and you had to walk the rest of the road alone, I would go through them," he said.

She saw the high lift of his neck, and she smiled proudly. Then they walked on some distance. He was gazing at her in silence. There was a conscious delight of her beauty in the swing of her step and the untamed glance of her eyes.

"Since the country is so fine, I suppose you'll stay a long while there?" she said in her sweetest tone.

"No longer than I must," he answered.

"Why not?"

"I don't know."

"But why not ?" she said again, looking at him sideways with a gleam of a smile.

He did not answer, and she laughed merrily.

"What a girl you are for laughing!" he said. "It may be very laughable to you that I'm going away"——

"But isn't it to you? Eh?" she said, as fast as a flash of quicksilver.