death. Neither will I die by my own act, lest they
think my courage broken by these breaking days. On my knees," said she,
"I beseech you to send me in some wise a little money, if it be but a
handful of pennies now and then throughout the year, so that I may keep
my head unbowed. Or if this is too much to ask, and even of you the
asking is not easy, then send some high and sudden accident of death to
blot me out before I grow too humble, and the lofty spirits of my
fathers deny one whose spirit ends as lowly as their dust. Death or
life I beg of you, and I care not which you send."

Then clasping her hands tightly, she called twice more her plea across
the mere: "Spirit of these waters, grant me life or death! Oh, Spirit,
grant me life or death!"

There was a stir in the forest as she made an end, and she remained
stock still, waiting and wondering. But though she knelt there till the
moon had crossed the bar of midnight, nothing happened.

Then the white hart, which had lain beside the water while she prayed,
rose silently and drank; and when it was satisfied, laid once more its
muzzle on her hair and licked her cheek again and moved away. Not a
twig snapped under its slender stepping. Its whiteness was soon covered
by the blackness.

Faint and exhausted, Rosalind arose. She dragged herself through the
wood and presently found the broad road that curled down the deserted
hill and over the bridge, and at last by a branching lane to her ruined
dwelling. The door of her tower creaked desolately to and fro a little,
open as she had left it. She pushed it further ajar and stumbled in and
up the narrow stair. But the pale moonlight entered her chamber with
her, silvering the oaken stump that was her table; and there, where
there had been nothing, she beheld two little heaps of copper coins.

The gold year waned, and the next passed from white to green; and in
the gold Harding began to hunt his hart, and by the green had not
succeeded in bringing it to bay. Twice he had seen it at a distance on
the hills, and once had started it from cover in Coombe Wood and
followed it through the Denture and Stammers, Great Bottom and Gumber,
Earthem Wood and Long Down, Nore Hill and Little Down; and at Punchbowl
Green he lost it. He did not care. A long chase had whetted him, and he
had waited so long that he was willing to wait another year, and if
need were two or three, for his royal quarry. He knew it must be his at
last, and he