h together. And still as I toiled a song kept
liddening (as we say in Cornwall) through my head: a song with two
refrains, whereof the first was the old nursery jingle--"Mud won't
daub sieve, sieve won't hold water, water won't wet stone, stone
won't edge axe, axe won't cut rod, rod won't make a gad, a gad to
hang Manachar who has eaten my raspberries every one." (So ran the
rigmarole with which Mrs. Nance had beguiled my infancy.) The second
refrain echoed poor Nat's cry, "She needs help, needs help, and you
could not see! Blind, blind, that you could not see!"

How should she need help? Little cared I though she needed it, and
sorely! But how had the notion taken hold of Nat?

Weakness? Delirium? No: he had been running to get help for her
when they shot him down. I had his word for that. . . . But she had
pursued with the others. For aught I knew, she herself had fired the
shot.

If she needed help, why was she treating us despitefully--putting
this insult upon me, for example? Why had she used those words of
hate? They had been passionate words, too; spoken from the heart in
an instant of surprise. Then, again, to suppose her a friend of the
Genoese was impossible. But why, if not a friend of the Genoese, was
she a foe of their foes? Why had she taken to the _macchia_ with
these men? Why were they keeping watch on the coast while careless
that their watchfire showed inland for leagues? Why, if she were a
patriot, had the sight of King Theodore's crown awakened such scorn
and yet rage against me, its bearer? Why again, at the mere word
that my father sought the Queen Emilia, had she let him pass on,
while redoubling her despite against me?

On top of these puzzles Nat must needs propound another, that this
girl stood in need of help! Help? From whom?

As my mind ran over these questions, still at every pause the old
rigmarole kept dinning--"Mud won't daub sieve, sieve won't hold
water, water won't wet stone . . ." on and on without ceasing, and
still I toiled and sweated.

By noon the hut was clean, at any rate tolerably clean; but its
soaked floor would certainly take many hours in drying, and Nat must
spend another night under the open sky. I left the hut, snatched a
meal of bread and cheese, and, after a pull at the wine flask, turned
my attention to the sty. To cleanse it before nightfall was out of
the question. I examined it and saw three good days' labour ahead of
me. But the pal