nly there came upon me a dwam
and a turning in my head, so that I cried to them to run on and leave me
to the pursuers. But to this the godly lads would in no wise consent.
'We will carry you,' they said, 'and put you in some hole in the moss
and cover you with heather.' So they designed, but the enemy being very
close upon us, they got me no further than a little peat brow at the
lane-side down there. They laid me on a shelf where the bank came over
me. Then I heard our people scattering and running in different
directions, in order that they might draw the enemy away from me. So I
lay still and waited for them to come and take me, if so it should be
the will of the Lord. And over me I heard the horses of the soldiers
plunging. One beast, as it gathered way for the spring over the burn,
sent its hoof down through the black peat and the stead of its hoof was
on my bonnet's brim. Yet, according to the mercies of the Lord, me it
harmed not. But the soldier fell off and hurt his head in his steel cap
upon the further bank, whereat he swore--which was a manifest judgment
upon him, to tangle him yet deeper in the wrath of God."

So here I abode in the cave with Anton, and we spoke of many things, but
specially of the lassie that was near to my heart and the pearl of his
soul. He told me sweet simple things of her childhood that warmed me
like well-matured wine.

As how that there was a day when, her mother being alive, Maisie came in
and said, "When I am a great girl and have bairns of my own, I shall let
them stay all day in the gardens where the grosarts are, and never say,
'You shall not touch!'"

This Anton thought to be a thing wondrously sound and orthodox, and he
saw in the child's word the stumbling stone of our mother Eve.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE BOWER OF THE STAR.

Day by day I tended him as gently as I could, till in the cave our
provisions were well-nigh spent. Then, one grey morning I took my pistol
to go out on the hillside to see if I could shoot aught to eat. But
because of my nervousness, or other cause, I could at that time do
nothing. Indeed, not so much as a whaup came near me on that great,
wide, dappled hill.

I saw a hill fox rise and run. He was a fine beast and very red, and
held his tail nobly behind him like a flag. But, hardly beset as we
were, we could with difficulty have eaten fox, even had I been able to
shoot him, which I was not.

The day passed slowly, the night came, and it